If it's Worth Saving Me
by TheVillainofTheStory
Summary: The BAU recieves a new case in a small town in southern Virginia. Over a score of young women have been found dead and lovingly placed where they shouldn't be found. Will Reid solve the case, or will a past ghost paralyze all rational thought?
1. Chapter 1

Here it is, the one I have been awaiting with baited breath to post. This, at least in my own opinion, is my magnum opus. I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. The story is only a few chapters in length, but the chapters themselves are very long.

1

A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely un-happen. ~Edward de Bono

To call any morning typical when six people who's every day lives revolve around trying to unravel the criminal psyche congregate in one room would be a lie. Typical is arriving at work and having to down three cups of coffee before being even remotely able to interact with one another. Normal people do not walk in and sit at their desk, open a case file, and have pink glitter fall out of it onto their lap.

This, as it so happens, was exactly how Agent Morgan's day began one cloudy summer day at the BAU office in Quantico. "Okay," he sighed in resignation as he stood up to try and brush the sparkles from his black pants. "Who was it this time?"

Emily and Reid exchanged smiles, wanting to enjoy their coworker's state of shimmering for a few more seconds before the novelty faded. It wasn't as though he had never done something similar to them throughout their time working together.

"I'm serious guys," he cried. Turning to Reid he demanded, "It was you, wasn't it?"

"Actually, no," Reid replied. "That case we worked last week, the one where you pulled the little girl out of that trunk in the attic? Manda, I think her name was? She wanted to come in and thank you again."

"It seemed real important to her to say thank you like a big girl and not be crying," Emily snickered. Morgan, after failing to get it all off his slacks, sat back down to hear the rest of their tale. "We told her you weren't here yet, but if she wanted to leave you a note we'd give it to you."

"Garcia had a bunch of craft supplies in her office, oddly enough," Reid interjected, not looking up from his computer screen. "So Manda and Garcia made you a card, using copious amounts of glitter. Then Manda decided that she wanted the card to be a surprise."

"So she decided to hide the card somewhere where she knew you'd find it," Emily finished. "Then they had to leave. But not before adding more glitter."

Morgan sighed and shook his head. "Of course," he gestured to his pants, "this is the one day I decide to wear black pants."

"You know, accusing me first of putting the glitter in the folder means that you acknowledge all the things you've done to me and expect retaliation, and might even regret them," Reid pointed out with his version of a wicked smile. "It also tells me that you don't think enough of me to be able to retaliate any better than glitter on your pants. I'm both touched and hurt, Morgan." He feigned a blow to the heart before looking back at his screen.

"What happened to not analyzing each other?" Morgan grumbled. Trying to wipe all the glitter out of the report was turning out to be a more difficult task than he thought. The lovely pink flecks were spreading everywhere like only glitter can.

"You know, if you go get a damp paper towel and gently wipe the pages all the glitter will come off," Emily suggested. A quizzical look from both Morgan and Reid made her continue, "I was a little girl once too. I've cleaned up my share of sparkly messes."

"They had glitter when you were little?" Reid asked teasingly.

Emily opened her mouth to answer, but JJ and Hotch strode in. They were obviously distressed and angry. Their demeanor clearly stated 'No more fooling around.'

"Get your stuff, I'll explain on the way," Hotch snapped before anyone could even think of a question to ask. The team grabbed their bags and went to follow their leader, curious and concerned.

"We're heading to a small town in the southern part of Virginia called Courtland. It has a population of a little less than two thousand people. And so far, twenty seven young women have been found dead," JJ began. The disgust in her voice was almost tangible. She smoothed her hands over her stomach, a left over habit from her pregnancy that she hadn't yet broken, in an attempt to calm herself.

"Why haven't we heard about this yet?" Rossi asked, slightly perplexed. It shouldn't have taken that long for the local authorities to realize they needed help. "The BAU should have been called after at most the third murder."

"At first, they didn't realize the girls were dead," Hotch explained. "They assumed that they had ran away from the small town in order to find excitement. Then, about two years ago, the unsub kidnapped the mayor of the town's daughter, Sandra Clark." Hotch pulled out the picture of the girl and laid it on the table. She was a pretty young woman with petite features framed by cornsilk hair. Her brown eyes smiled up at the team even though her mouth was quirked to the side in a bored smirk.

"How did they know she had been kidnapped?" Emily asked as she picked up the photo. She felt a pang of sorrow for the girl; if beauty were a way to predict how successful a person would be in life, Sandra would have gone far.

"The unsub left a note," JJ said as she passed out copies of the unsub's note to each team member. "_I have your daughter, and I'm not going to be giving her back alive. Don't feel special, like I specifically targeted her. You all have failed to notice the others. This is my way of getting your attention. So, for the record, no female between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five are safe. Maybe if you'd open your eyes, Mayor Clark, this wouldn't have happened_," JJ read.

"The unsub is confident that he won't be found," Reid pointed out. "He wants to be noticed, but he goes out of his way to treat all the victims equally, according to the report. The consistency is something he craves."

Morgan nodded in agreement before adding, "But he warned them who is target group is. That's more than confidence, that's a god complex."

"I thought a god complex was someone who thinks they have the right to choose who lives or dies?" JJ pointed out.

"Well, that's true. God complex is a very broad term used to describe several different things. Our unsub seems to have Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or NPD. It's a personality disorder defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is the diagnostic classification system used in the United States, as a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy," Reid explained. As usual, his vast memory was greeted by silence. A silence that ranged from bored to annoyed to unimpressed.

"Why didn't they call us sooner?" Rossi asked. That was his hang up on the information so far. If they knew that so many girls had been taken, it was a failure in local law enforcement's responsibility as protectors to have kept it under wraps for so long.

JJ sighed. "They thought they could handle it," she replied. It was a sad situation, one that made her want to be home hugging her baby boy.

"What made them change their minds?" Morgan asked. "They wouldn't have come to us if they still thought they could handle it."

"They found the bodies," Hotch replied. The team looked at him, completely shocked.

Emily recovered first. "You mean they didn't know how many victims there were until-"

"Three days ago," Hotch sighed.

"This is where they've been hidden," the sheriff said as he moved the branches of a willow out of the way so the team had a better view. Behind the tresses of leaves there was a tiny field and pond. The sun shone down brightly on the wildflowers and a light breeze made the long grass dance lazily. A perfect spot for a lazy afternoon or romantic picnic. If not for the bodies strewn about in various states of decay.

"How did you find them here?" Hotch asked. The setting was a bit out of the way, up in the hills and over a ravine.

"Two kids from town were coming here for a picnic," the sheriff replied. Across the ravine where the trucks were parked stood two teenagers, a boy and girl, with an actual picnic basket. They were giving their statement to one of the local police and Emily. "They found the bodies and called the sheriff's department. We made are way up here and then called you all."

Reid inched foreword through the willow branches. The ground was soft under his feet, almost wet. "Sheriff Jenkins, did it rain recently?" he asked as he continued his slow way foreword.

"Yes, actually it rained yesterday," the sheriff replied, sounding apologetic. He and Hotch followed Reid into the field. "It was a mixed blessing. We needed the rain, but now all that evidence is practically gone."

Reid walked up to the first body, one who was fresh enough that you could mistake her for being asleep. Next to her was a skeleton. In both of their hands was a fresh tiger lily.

"Has your M.E. taken a look at he bodies yet?" Hotch asked as he knelt next to the skeleton. Reid stayed standing, just staring at the body. This girl was just as beautiful as Sandra Clark, but in a different way. The new girl had red hair and freckles. Her eyes, wide open and staring up at Reid, were pale green.

Sheriff Jenkins had been distracted by the girl as well. Shaking his head to try and clear it, he apologized. "I'm sorry, it's just that I know her. This is Rissa McKenzie. Her father is one of my deputies. He's going to be devastated."

"We're sorry for your loss," Hotch said quietly. "I know it must be hard to lose so many young women in your community. Girls you've seen grow from infants into the beautiful young minds of tomorrow. But the sooner your M.E. gets here, the sooner we can start find who did this."

"She's out of town," Jenkins replied.

"She?" Reid asked, startled out of his reverie.

The sheriff chuckled. "That's what we said when she first came here. A woman doing all that nasty work on dead people. Even I don't like going down to the morgue, but that woman can pull information from corpses I never knew existed."

"Hm." Reid glanced back down at the bodies. "There aren't very many female coroners. Not to say that women can't perform an autopsy," he assured quickly.

Before Reid could dig himself a bigger hole, Hotch asked, "The who's going to come get the bodies?"

"The assistant M.E. This is the first vacation the doc has ever taken because she finally felt that Skippy was ready," the Sheriff explained.

"Skippy?"

The sheriff looked slightly embarrassed. "That's what the assistant coroner has always been called here in Courtland. His real name is Franklin, but you can just call him Skippy."

Turning back to the bodies, Reid asked, "Why a tiger lily?"

"Well, they grow everywhere around here," Sheriff Jenkins explained. "And they're a pretty flower."

"But to take the time to place a tiger lily on each body, that shows a sign of remorse," Reid said. "And that doesn't fit with our profile."

"Maybe it's a way of marking them as his own," a voice from behind them suggested. It was a young man, no older than twenty-three. He looked too lanky and uncoordinated to have made it across the ravine, and sure enough his hands and arms were covered in shallow cuts.

"You must be Skippy," Hotch asked. He stuck out his hand. "I'm Agent Hotchner and this is Dr. Reid." Skippy smiled and shook Hotch's hand. He seemed easy going. Then again, to stand in a field of bodies and not flinch you had to be a laid back person.

"Why do you say that the flower is a way of marking them?" Reid asked. He shook Skippy's hand as well, surprised at how firm a handshake he received.

"It makes sense," Skippy said as he knelt down next to the body. "See, they were cleaned before they were dumped. Their make up was reapplied, their clothes are new and fresh, and their hair has been brushed into place around them." Sure enough, when he lifted the body of Rissa McKenzie up, the back of her hair wasn't as perfectly brushed as the front. It had a knot in it that only come from sleeping without brushing your hair for a few days.

"What does that have to do with the lily?" Hotch asked again, trying to figure out what the young man seeing and he wasn't.

"There are no marks on the body. No ligature marks, no abrasions, no lacerations. If the killer couldn't bear to mark up Rissa when he killed her, this tells me two things. One, he can't stand to see something beautiful blemished. And two, the lily is a way to both mark the victim as his and also it gives him a reason to come back and visit the body. To replace the flower so it doesn't wilt," Skippy clarified. Hotch and Reid stared at the strange young man.

"You struck 'em speechless Skippy," the sheriff chuckled. He stopped abruptly when he realized he was laughing over the body of a girl he knew.

"Sorry," the assistant coroner mumbled. "It's just how I see it. Doc taught me how to do that. She could tell you even more if she were here."

"Don't be sorry," Hotch ordered as he stood up. "When you see things like that on the rest of the bodies, tell us. Sheriff, You and I are going to go look at these other bodies. I need to know if you recognize any more victims."

"We aren't angry that you saw something we didn't," Reid assured the younger man. "It's just, not many people can tell those kind of things on a perfunctory glance. You said that the coroner taught you how to do that? Do you know where she went to learn it?"

Skippy looked up from the skeleton he was examining. "She didn't go to college to learn it," he replied. "She's always been able to do it. Her mother visited once, and she was the exact same. They have this sense for people. She taught me what she could because it's useful for our craft. She has a bunch of sayings, but the one I remember most is 'Some people are born with gifts others can only envy, never attain. But while they yearn after what the other has, they fail to notice their own abilities.'"

Reid contemplated that for a time, turning it over in his mind. "Do you think that she'll be back before we've finished the investigation?" Reid finally asked. This was a new, different puzzle to be solved.

Skippy smiled. "I don't know. Depends on how long it takes you all to solve this," he prodded jokingly. Then seriously he continued, "I doubt it. Doc said she was going to visit her mother in northern Virginia."

"Oh well," Reid sighed. The opportunity to speak with another genius who wasn't a serial killer had passed him, flying in the exact opposite direction.

"We don't really have any where for you to stay but here," Sheriff Jenkins said apologetically. The team stood infront of an old stone house that had been converted into a bed and breakfast. The sing proclaimed it to be the 'Hound and Ham' Bed and Breakfast.

Emily was the first to ask what was on everyone's mind. "Why is it called the Hound and Ham?" she asked as they walked up the stairs. As they neared the porch, an old bloodhound picked his wrinkly head up to glance at them then went back to his nap.

"That's Basil, the current hound. Each owner has had some type of hound dog and has made the best ham this side of Christmas dinner," Jenkins explained. More small town culture for the city folk, how quaint.

Jenkins knocked politely on the door. A plump old woman bustled toward the door, carrying a bowl of batter to stir and looking very much like a stereotypical grandmother. "You must be the agents Silas here called down from the FBI," she said. Even her voice screamed grandmother. She stood there, no more than five feet tall with her gray hair pulled back in a bun, looking like she couldn't decide who was going to get to lick the bowl after she put the brownies in to bake.

"This is Mrs. Matilda Thomas," Sheriff Jenkins said. "Mrs. Thomas, these are Agents Hotchner, Morgan, Rossi, Prentice, and Jereau, and Dr. Reid. Thank you most kindly for takin' them in while they're here."

Mrs. Thomas swatted him lightly with the spoon. "As though I would leave them in that uncomfortable hole you call a police station," she said with a smile. "Come in and wash up for supper. We're havin' fried chicken."

The team filed into the house, each murmuring thanks to the old woman as they passed. The dog tried to sneak in, but Mrs. Thomas gave it a stern word and it went back to its nap.

"Reid, you have to take your shoes off," JJ pointed out as they came in. She had reminded the others already, but Reid had a few little eccentricities. Hopefully feet weren't one of them.

"Why?" he asked cautiously. The possibility for Morgan to have him step in something were increased as soon as his shoes came off.

"It's part of Southern culture," Morgan explained. "It's polite."

"The weird things I learn on this job," Reid muttered. He slipped his shoes off and put them with the rest. He regretted it immediately. In his haste not to be late for work, Reid had grabbed one blue sock and one red. There was no chance that Morgan wouldn't notice.

A little later that evening, the team was settled around Mrs. Thomas's dining table to eat their supper. "Bless, O Lord, this food for thy use, and make us ever mindful of the wants and needs of others. Amen," Mrs. Thomas prayed. The rest of the team muttered amen as well out of respect for their host and then began passing the dishes around.

"This is really, really good Mrs. Thomas," JJ gushed as she wiped some chicken grease from her mouth with a little embroidered napkin. "I haven't had home fried chicken since I was a little girl."

"Please, call me Tilly," the old lady insisted. "And thank you. I wasn't quite sure what was proper etiquette when catering to the FBI, so I fixed something simple." Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, greens, macaroni and cheese, with brownie fudge sundae for desert, and she calls it simple.

Reid was looking contemplatively between his chicken breast and fork. "How do you eat it?" he finally had to ask.

Morgan chuckled and pulled the fork out of the good doctor's grasp. "You eat it with your hands," he explained. To demonstrate he picked up his own leg and took a huge bite out of it. "See?" he asked through a mouthful.

"I actually have an ulterior reason for letting you all stay here," Tilly admitted as she passed out the little bowls of icecream and brownie fudge covered goodness. "My granddaughter Esmerelda went missing three months ago. She was twenty-one and going to take over the bed and breakfast for me. Now, I just don't know if she's been taken or if she ran away." The old woman was able to divulge this without getting emotional.

The team was silent for a few minutes as their icecream began to melt. "We'll do what we can to find her," Hotch finally promised.

"That's all I ask for," Tilly said as she sat back down.

_Spencer found himself in a library alone, only the faint whir of an air-conditioner for company. The sun was fading through the windows but not enough to be called twilight yet. He walked cautiously around a shelf, not quite sure why a feeling of unease came with the images. Then in the back corner of the room, at a table, sat Spencer himself._

_He was much younger of course. Upon seeing the boy, older Spencer realized why he was so uneasy: it was his highschool library. Little Spencer looked out the window, seeming to just realize how late it was getting. He began frantically shoving his books into the messenger bag at his side, then abruptly stopped at some unseen signal. The little boy just stared out the window looking forlorn._

_Older Spencer walked around the table to stand next to himself. There had been many afternoons like this. Hopefully this was one of the better ones._

_Unfortunately not. In walked a pretty teenage girl in a cheerleading uniform. Her perfect blonde hair was pulled up into a high ponytail and her depthless brown eyes shimmered with a cruel glee. Heather Wilkes was about to make his life hell._

_"Spencer," she purred. The cheerleader walked up to the table and leaned across it seductively. "Lexi wanted me to come and find you."_

_"L-l-lexi?" little Spencer sputtered. "B-but why?" Suspicion might have kept him from the humiliation to come. But infatuation got caught in the way._

_"She wants to talk with you silly," Heather giggled. She grabbed little Spencer's hand, but older Spencer could feel her grip as well. "Come on, we just finished practice. She's down by the football field."_

_Both Spencers found themselves being dragged down to the football field. While little Spencer went along rather willingly, Dr. Spencer was pulling and tugging at the grip on his hand to no avail. He had no desire to relive the tortured memories of his past._

_"What's g-going on?" little Spencer squeaked. Lexi was no where to be found. The football team was there though._

_"I can't believe he actually fell for it," Brock, one of the more Neanderthal players, chortled. "Like my girlfriend would want anything to do with you. She's not even in town, dweeb."_

_Before little Spencer could run or older Spencer could close his eyes, the team converged on him, stripping him mercilessly down to his underwear. "Little Spencer thinks he's so smart, making us look like idiots in class," one of them taunted._

_"Why would they even let a kid so small try and pass for a highschooler?" another jeered. Using a length of coarse rope, they bound the little boy to the goal post. Spencer stood there helplessly as his younger self tried not to cry while the team threw footballs and cleats at him._

_"GET THE HELL AWAY FROM HIM!" a female voice ordered from across the field. Like Moses parting the sea, a girl with long ebony hair and sapphire eyes strode briskly through the crowd of jocks. "Are you alright, kiddo?"_

_"This isn't your concern, Adrienne," Brock snapped. "The boy has to learn his place."_

_The look Adrienne gave him would have been enough to draw blood from stone. "Spencer Reid is ten years old and in our sophomore class. You will treat him with the respect he deserves, or you will find yourself unable to play in the next game due to an unfortunate injury," she threatened calmly._

_"What, is he your new boyfriend?" Heather sneered. Adrienne turned her piercing gaze on the cheerleader and simply stared. Heather shivered, as though suddenly cold._

_"Listen freak," another began, but Adrienne cut him off._

_"Freak I may be, but you all are no better than animals. Leave this boy alone or I will make you regret harming him," she promised, venom dripping from her voice. Both Spencers looked at her gratefully._

_"Fine," Brock snapped. "Let's go guys. But if this little brat bothers me again, it's coming out of your hide Adrienne Cain." Adrienne hissed at him, like a snake about to strike. The team back off like she truly was venomous, then meandered their way to the student parking lot._

_"Are you all right Spencer?" she asked as she untied the rope. It fell to the ground, and little Spencer rubbed his wrists to get the circulation back._

_"Who are you?" he asked, then clamped his hands over his mouth. He had meant to say thank you, but as usual a pretty girl had made him tongue-tied. Older Spencer shook his head; he still got tongue tied around beautiful women._

_She chuckled though, and handed him his shirt and pants. "My name is Adrienne Cain. I'm a transfer student from Virginia. This has happened before, hasn't it?" she asked._

_"N-no," he stammered. Little Spencer pulled his shirt over his head, trying not to cry as he aggravated the bruises that they had given him. "W-why would you s-say that?"_

_"Maybe not this specifically, but they do torment you," she observed. Older Spencer looked at her and shook his head once more. What she was doing seemed then like magic; now it was his job to read people like that._

_Little Spencer looked up at Adrienne with large, teary brown eyes. "P-please, don't t-tell any one!" he begged. He pulled on his shorts and looked around for his bag. But Adrienne had that too. She helped get it on his shoulder without touching his bruises._

_"Spencer, it looks like you need a friend," she sighed. Taking his hand, the two walked toward her car. Older Spencer followed, this time willingly. At least this incident had a happy ending._

_"I need to be left alone," he muttered under his breath. But she heard him any way._

_After letting out a laugh that sounded like the peal of bells, Adrienne replied, "Spencer, no man is an island unto himself. From now on, you're with me. Lunch, study hall, library after school. And if you get bothered, come find me."_

_"But-"_

_"No buts. Hop in and I'll give you a ride home. Then we'll see about your injuries," she insisted as she opened the car door for little Spencer._

_Older Spencer watched as his younger self and his superhero drove off._

Reid woke with a start, sweating and tangled in his sheets. After shaking his head to clear away the disorientation nightmares so often leave, Reid looked out the window to calm himself. Dawn was still hours away and Morgan was thankfully still asleep in the other bed. Standing up and stretching, Reid walked quietly out of the room and down the stairs.

He had been expecting the house to be dark and deathly quiet, but the kitchen hearth was lit and Basil sat infront of it, wagging his tail. Reid sat down on the floor next to the dog, which put his big wrinkled head on the doctor's knee.

"But where is my superhero now when I need her?" he asked the dog. Basil looked up at him with droopy hound dog eyes. "I don't know either."

"Well, she's not down here," Tilly said kindly from behind him. Reid started to stand up, but she gesture for him to remain seated. Putting the two mugs of hot tea she held on the table, the old woman sat down in a chair near the fire. "Here you go m'boy." She handed him a mug of tea.

"How did you know that I would come down here?" he asked as he took a tiny sip. The tea was laced with milk and sugar.

Tilly smiled. "I just knew. It's a grandmother thing," she explained with a smile. "I know you had a nightmare. About a friend, if what you said to Basil is any indication."

Reid stared at the swirling milk and tea in his mug. "I had a dream," he began. "It was a memory from highschool. I was only nine when I was a sophomore, you see-"

"My, you are smart," Tilly interjected. Concern was etched in her face. "Bad memories and a photographic mind. A combination that can only have one outcome: nightmares."

Reid nodded. "The football team had lured me down to the field. They tied me to the goal post and threw footballs at me. Then this dark haired girl, who I had never seen before, rescues me. I was still scared, but she took my hand and drove me home. She watched out for me for the rest of highschool. I referred to her as my superhero, though thankfully she never knew that," he rambled. Shaking his head to clear it, he asked, "How do you know all this? My photographic memory, that I'd have a nightmare?"

Tilly smiled. "I was the town coroner for thirty years back in my day. The current coroner is my great great niece. What you would call profiling is a talent that the women in my family have had for generations. Almost every woman who has had it became a coroner. We use it where it can best help people.

"You are worried about something. A message of some kind came from your superhero, but you were too afraid to open it. Now you feel guilty. She's probably around the same age as these women who are being abducted and killed. I understand," she promised, reaching down and clasping his shoulder, "But to find these girls, you can't be distracted. Think of it as making the world safer for her. Like saving your superhero for once."

Reid stared into the fire and took a sip of tea. The old woman made a good point and she knew it. "Thanks, Mrs. Thomas," he muttered, contemplative.

"Any time son, any time," she said. Standing up, she continued, "I'm off to bed. You should do the same. Get some rest and contemplate later."

"I'll go up in a minute," he promised as he continued to gaze into the flames. Tilly shook her head and walked up the steps, leaving Reid alone with the dog and his own tortured thoughts.

The leaves of memory seemed to make  
A mournful rustling in the dark.  
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

And so my story begins... Tell me what you think, please!


	2. Chapter 2

Here's the second chapter. By the way, I don't claim that any of the science in this story is correct.

2

A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own. ~Thomas Mann

"It never ceases to amaze me that beautiful people always seem to be the ones who are murdered," Rossi remarked as he stood over the body of Rissa McKenzie. Twenty-seven bodies had filled the morgue past its maximum capacity. Bodies that still held on to the remnants of identity were put in the drawers. Skeletal remains weren't so fortunate; they were piled on carts in the hallway.

Skippy snorted from behind him. "Maybe in your line of work, Agent Rossi, but not here. Usually the only dead folk that roll into our domain are the result of drunken brawls. Large men in flannel shirts aren't beautiful by my standards," he said as he began to comb another girl's hair out of the way.

It hadn't taken very long to identify the fresher bodies. Twelve out of the twenty-seven girls had been identified. While JJ and Sheriff Jenkins began the unpleasant task of informing relatives and Emily and Morgan were looking over the dumpsite, Rossi, Hotch and Reid were trying to ascertain what had caused the untimely demise of so many young women.

"It's strange that there are absolutely no marks on them," Reid said as he scrutinized the neck of a blonde woman. "No signs of strangulation, no wounds, no signs that they were ever bound, either. Poison, maybe?"

"I'll have Charlotte, our resident toxicologist, run their blood," Skippy said absently as he sniffed one of the many tiger lilies that they had collected. "Does this smell strange to any one else?"

Rossi turned from his descendant and sniffed the flower as well. "You're right, it does smell weird," he agreed with a frown. "I know that smell." His brow creased as he tried to remember what the scent was.

Reid picked up a lily and turned it carefully in his hands. "I did some research on these flowers. Their real name is Lilium Superbum, but they have several much more common names such as Turk's Cap Lily, Turban Lily, Swamp Lily, and of course Tiger Lily. They are often mistakenly identified as Michigan Lilies, which are endangered."

As Rossi opened his mouth, no doubt to make a scathing comment to Reid, Skippy suddenly fell to the floor. His body began to convulse in the most disturbing way, contorting into positions that were obviously not natural from the pained screams and gasps he was making. Rossi reacted first, reaching down in an attempt to restrain the poor lad and prevent him from bashing his skull in, but out of now where it seemed the agent began to vomit violently.

Reid stared wide-eyed at the two men, hardly believing what he saw. Hotch wasn't quite so helpless. The team leader dove to the ground next to Skippy, restraining him. This seemed to cause the assistant M.E. even more pain, but it was preferable to brain trauma. "Reid! Go get a medic!" Hotch ordered as he fought the younger man into submission.

Reid needed no further encouragement. Dashing out of the room, Reid didn't look back on the disturbing scene.

"You're lucky that they got here in time," the doctor said. Hotch, Reid, and Deputy McKenzie were standing in the room Rossi and Skippy shared at the hospital. "Any later and we'd have lost them both."  
"What happened to them, Eaton?" Deputy McKenzie asked. "I mean, Dr. Hill?"

Dr. Hill walked around Rossi's bed to check on Skippy, who had gotten the worst of whatever had happened to them. "They were poisoned," he sighed.

"By what?" Hotch demanded. "How?"

Rossi opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He grabbed the cup of water from beside his table and took a long gulp before attempting to speak again. "Cyanide," he croaked before draining the rest of the water.

"He's right," the doctor sighed. Skippy was sleeping, exhausted from his convulsions, but the doctor still was still concerned. "We administrated amyl nitrite and pumped their stomachs just to be safe. After putting them on artificial respiration we injected them with sodium nitrite and sodium thiosulfate. All of which are deadly on their own. These are two very lucky men."

Reid walked over to sit next to the sleeping Skippy. "Can you tell how it happened?" he asked.

"There are three ways to be poisoned with cyanide: inhalation, contact, and ingestion," he replied. Moving away from Skippy, he made Rossi stick his tongue out. "The only food in your agent's stomach was Tilly's good home cookin'. Skippy seemed to have only eaten soup. I don't think they ingested it."

Hotch's head snapped up from the medical chart he was reading. "They both sniffed the flower," he said. Rossi nodded, his throat too torn up from projectile vomiting to speak.

"Flower?" the deputy asked puzzled. "You mean those lilies, the one that bastard put on my Rissa? They're poisoned?"

"So it appears," Reid muttered. "But that means he knew we would find the bodies. He's playing with us."

"Reid, we have to go gather all of those lilies," Hotch said. He turned and strode out of the room. Reid scrambled to follow, only taking the time to give a last worried glance to the assistant M.E. and Rossi.

Rossi sat up, probably trying to get out of bed. The doctor stopped him before he could get too far though. "Oh no you don't Agent Rossi," Dr. Hill warned. He firmly laid Rossi back against his pillow. "You are in no shape to be gallivanting off into the sunset. Deputy McKenzie here will keep you company until your team returns."

Rossi flopped his head back against the pillow with a groan.

"Hotch, is Rossi alright?" JJ asked as the team sat down. Sheriff Jenkins had graciously evacuated his office so that the team could use it as a meeting room.

"He'll be fine," Hotch assured the blonde. To the rest of the team he said, "The flowers that we collected from the bodies were laced with cyanide."

"Cyanide?" Morgan asked. "That's pretty nasty stuff. It fits though. The unsub doesn't want any one to touch the girls."

"There's more," Hotch said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Rossi only got a secondary dose. Skippy, the assistant M.E. got the full blast. He'll be fine, but we need to get the Doc back here ASAP. If not, we'll never know what killed those girls."

"Damn," Morgan sighed. He pulled out his phone and dialed Garcia, putting it on speaker. "Hey Baby Girl, you're on speaker."

"Talk to me," she sighed. Garcia sounded slightly depressed.

"What's wrong?" Emily asked, eyeing the phone mischievously. "Kevin finally decide that you're too much woman for him?"

"That had better not be a fat joke," the somewhat re-formed hacker grumbled.

Hotch cleared his throat. "Garcia, we need you to find the local M.E. She's visiting her mother in Manassas," he informed her, bringing his team back to order.

"I will find her, and then you will be the first to know," Garcia replied. The team could almost imagine her saluting. Morgan snapped the phone shut with a chuckle.

A thought hit Reid. "You know, we could have Tilly come and take a look at the bodies in the mean time," he suggested.

The rest of the team stared at him like he had grown another head. "Reid, you can't expect us to make that sweet old lady come in and look at all these corpses," Emily asked rhetorically. She knew Reid could be a little off at times, but this was weird even for him.

"Man what is wrong with you?" Morgan asked, genuinely concerned. "First actually cracking jokes, now wanting to make an elderly woman see the faces of young girls she probably saw grow up? What is going on in that massive brain of yours?"

Reid was disappointed in his fellow team members. Did they really think so little of him? "Tilly was the M.E. for this town for thirty years," he snapped. Well, he thought he snapped at them. To the rest of the team Reid sounded just like he usually did: omniscient and willing.

Hotch nodded in ascent. "JJ, have Sheriff Jenkins go ask Tilly if she would be willing to help us out," he ordered. "Reid, you and I are going to go back down to the morgue and see what can be done about those flowers. Emily and Morgan, you start looking through databases for people in town that could have done this."

The team filed out of the tiny office, leaving Reid and Hotch alone. Reid was staring at his computer screen, trying to come to a decision about something. Hotch watched the young doctor intently, going against their own unsaid rule about not profiling one another.

As if he could feel his boss's stare, Reid explained without looking up, "I got an e-mail from a friend from highschool. I'm scared to open it, funnily enough."

Hotch's intense stare changed from probing to understanding and concern. "Let's go down to the morgue. You can open it later. Or not, whichever you choose."

Reid smiled briefly up at Hotch as he closed his laptop. They walked out of the room and down to the morgue to try and find out more about the sicko murdering young women.

"You should have called me as soon as the current Skippy was taken to the hospital," Tilly admonished Reid as she pulled on a pair of Latex gloves. Reid could tell that this old woman was comfortable in the cold and dark of the morgue; it was her element even more than the kitchen in the Hound and Ham.

"I didn't think of it until one of the other agents had mentioned finding the current M.E.," Reid said apologetically.

Tilly gave him a look as she walked over to the body of a girl with blonde-ish brown hair. She sighed as she opened the girl's eye. "This is Danica Philman. Middle daughter of a family of seven girls. Her father raised them all after their mother ran off to Las Vegas to be a stripper. He'll be crushed."

Hotch nodded and wrote her name down on a sheet of paper; she had been one of the ones Skippy couldn't identify. "Is Skippy from around here?" he asked. "He didn't know her."

Tilly smiled as she looked up from the Y-incision she was making. "She's grown up quite a bit since he saw her last. Franklin, this Skippy, went off to college and when he came home all the little girls of his childhood had grown into beautiful women. Esmerelda had him over for dinner with the current M.E. and myself and we joked with him about it," she said, joy in her voice. In a melancholy tone she continued, "But now my emerald is gone, and my darkness must do what must be done."

"Emerald? Darkness?" Reid asked, perplexed. "What are you talking about?"

Tilly smiled sadly. "That's what my babies' names mean: emerald and darkness. My pet names for them, you see," she explained. Something in the body wiped the sadness from her face and put shock in its place.

"What is it?" Hotch asked as he walked over to her table.

"Her muscles have almost completely deteriorated," Tilly muttered. Grabbing a fresh scalpel she strode over to the next body and opened her up as well. "The same in this one. I recognize this type of reaction," she said wearily. Tilly walked over to a chair near the back of the room and sat down heavily on it.

"What is it?" Hotch demanded. He looked closely at the muscles, trying to see what she so obviously had.

"It's hemlock," Tilly replied, the disgust in her voice barely palpable but there none the less. "He probably gave it to her as a salad. I'll have to pump her stomach to be sure though."

"Hemlock is what Socrates drank, according to Plato. It causes muscle deterioration and eventual respiratory failure," Reid explained to Hotch. "It's a death that doesn't blemish the exterior beauty of the victims."

"But it would be painful, and they'd be conscious for the entire process," Tilly remarked thoughtfully. She stood and walked back to the bodies, all traces of weariness gone. "That doesn't sound like something this man would do."

"Why is that?" Hotch asked. The old lady was more cryptic than Reid and Gideon combined.

But the old woman waved the FBI agents' question off with a dismissive gesture. "I'll look into it. But for now, you have to go brief the Sheriff and his men. Come back with the M.E. and I'll be able to tell you for certain."

"We finally have a useable profile to give you all," JJ announced. Sheriff Jenkins had gathered his entire force of about thirty men. They waited patiently, but from their expressions it could be surmised that they would rather be out in the field searching for the bastard who had kidnapped their daughters. And no one on the BAU could begrudge them that.

"Our UNSUB has a type of God complex known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It means he has a lack of empathy but craves admiration and attention. The note he left your mayor three years ago, stating the age group of his victims, proves this. His choice of beautiful young women also tells us he derives a sexual pleasure from these killings," Hotch explained. His opening profile was met with a cold, unfriendly silence.

"You mean not only has he killed my daughter," Deputy McKenzie finally said, face flushed with anger. He was controlling himself quite well, but a fury was building up in him. "But he raped her too?"

"No no no no no!" Emily said quickly. "That's another part of the profile. Tilly has found no trace of rape."

"The UNSUB can't stand to blemish these girls in any way," Morgan interjected. The men calmed down a bit, waiting to hear the rest of the 'good' news. "He washes, re-dresses, and puts make-up back on them before he dumps them. He places a lily laced with cyanide on them so that no one who touches them get away unscathed. He gets his perverted thrills from the victims' perfection."

"We're looking for a man probably in his forties," Reid began. "He's probably a collector of something, paintings or sculptures, some type of art. He loves beautiful things. You all have probably sat right next to him and never even known. He most likely has a job that he excels in. It allows him to be put in the spotlight."  
The force was silent for a few moments. In contemplation about the man who had murdered their daughters, maybe, or trying to remember a person who fit the description. One of the men piped up, "I wish Doc were here."

Another man sighed. "Yeah," he agreed, his voice thick with a Southern fried accent. "There ain't no person in this town she don't know. She'd tell you right quick who this dirty SOB is."

This jogged Hotch's memory. "Sheriff Jenkins," he asked, "where is your M.E.? With Skippy out of commission we need her back immediately."

The sheriff looked uncomfortable. "Well, I don't rightly know," he admitted slowly. The BAU team members gaped at him.

"You don't know where your own M.E. is?" Emily demanded, shocked.

"She's incommunicado," Deputy McKenzie chuckled. "When she goes up to visit her mama she makes it quite clear that she is not to be disturbed. Her mama's real sick, so we don't make too much a fuss about it. Selena Cain did too much for this town for us to go against the wishes of her and the Doc."

The BAU team could not believe what they had been told. Silence reigned for what seemed like hours until Morgan finally said, "We are screwed."

_Spencer found himself once more in the library of his highschool. The sun was bright and yellow, making it probably around 2:00 PM. It was silent, an empty sort of silence that tells you no one else is around. Spencer glanced at the books on the shelf, perusing their titles. During his time there, Spencer had read almost every book in the library. At least, all the ones that had interested him._

_A soft rustling of pages came from behind the shelf. Spencer walked cautiously around the aisle, hoping that this wasn't another unpleasant memory. Life at the moment was filled with enough vile thoughts; dreams should have been his escape._

_Instead of the horror he had anticipated, Spencer came face to face with Adrienne Cain. His superhero. In her left hand a spiral notebook hung precariously as she reached for a book on the top shelf, in her right a stack of books was piled seven high. A blue pen was stuck in her mouth. _

_Out of habit, Spencer reached over to help her with the book. His hand passed right through hers, like he didn't exist. The doctor chuckled at his own foolishness; of course he didn't exist. This was a memory._

_Adrienne couldn't manage to grab the book with her arms so full, so she placed her things gently on the ground. She tucked the pen behind her ear along with an errant strand of silky ebony hair. Turning back to the shelf, the beautiful teen grabbed the book with ease._

_Suddenly, as if from no where, Little Spencer appeared next to her. "H-hi Ad-drienne," he stammered quietly. It was obvious he would have rather been anywhere in the world than next to the older girl at that moment. Older Spencer looked wryly at the scene; he would give anything to be next to her in the present._

"_Hello Spencer," she greeted brightly. Stacking her books back into her arms, Adrienne strode confidently to a table in the farthest corner of the room. It had a view of all the windows, but was in shadow so that no light shone on it. Little Spencer had followed her awkwardly, tripping over his own feet twice and all but falling into the chair across from her._

_Both students pulled out their respective homework assignments in silence. Little Spencer had Chemistry homework to enjoy. Adrienne on the other hand had her notebook open already and her elegantly flowing handwriting was spilling across the page for an English assignment. The only noise in the library was pen on paper and the click-whir of the airconditioner._

_Older Spencer watched as his younger self became absorbed in the science, the boy soon forgetting all space, time, and the beautiful girl across from him. Adrienne noticed the same thing and chuckled, putting her pen down to watch the boy. Older Spencer glanced at her paper and noticed she was done. Three whole pages filled to the brink with her thoughts on William Shakespeare's 47__th__ sonnet._

"_Spencer, what is the atomic mass of cobalt?" she asked seriously._

_Without looking up, the little boy replied, "58.933159." As if just realizing another person was there, Little Spencer's head snapped up. His eyes were wide and startled. Adrienne laughed her wonderfully infectious laugh and rolled her eyes._

"_Spencer, it's alright," she assured him. Adrienne picked up her Literature book and returned it to her black messenger bag. "You looked so serious, so deep in thought. I assume you were reading about Avogadro's Number?"_

"_How did you know that?" the little boy demanded. Older Spencer pondered that as well. All those many years later and that was still one of the few things he never knew how she did. He had figured out most of her tricks, but that one was still just beyond comprehension._

_Adrienne ignored the question. "How do you think he came up with it?" she asked instead. She folded her hands behind her head and leaned back, the very picture of beauty at rest._

"_Amedeo Avogadro, an Italian scientist, came up with the concept of Avogadro's Number because he believed that the volume of a gas, at a given pressure and temperature, is proportional to the number of atoms or molecules regardless of the nature of the gas," he explained promptly. Little Spencer gave Adrienne an odd look. He still didn't trust her; she was five years older than him and there was no reason for her to befriend him unless she wanted something. It would be foolish on his part to become attached to the beautiful girl only to have her use him as the means to an end then leave him alone and more miserable than he already was._

_That was another problem. Adrienne _**was**_ beautiful. Older Spencer observed now what his juvenile version was a bit too young to understand. Her skin was porcelain perfect and almost snow white. This was odd for anyone living in the desert. Her long hair was as black as obsidian and just as shimmery and satiny. Her eyes, focused on his younger self at the moment, were a startling blue against the white of her skin and black of her hair. Sapphire didn't do them justice; it was too common a description. Cobalt, maybe, or cerulean. Adrienne Cain had been and still was the single most beautiful woman Spencer had ever seen._

"_That's not exactly what I meant," Adrienne said finally. The look on her face was slightly disappointed, like Little Spencer didn't see something she did. "How did he come up with it?"_

"_I told you, Amedeo-"_

_Adrienne batted her hand in a dismissive gesture. "Yes, yes. Amedeo Avogadro in 1811 blah blah blah. What I really mean is what caused him to arrive at the number 6.0221415__*__10__23__?"_

_Little Spencer gaped openly at her, jaw practically hitting the table. "You remember Avogadro's Number? You know he discovered it in 1811?" he asked eagerly. This was the beginning of the end for Spencer. From that moment on, he was completely smitten with Adrienne Cain. It took him years to realize it of course, but there would be no more awkward silence. There would be more stuttering, but even the great Dr. Reid isn't perfect._

"_Yes," she replied patiently. "Now answer my question."_

_Little Reid thought about it for a while. "I don't know," he finally admitted. That was frustrating. Little Spencer rarely failed to be able to answer a question, but this was a different kind of question. This question wasn't based in science and reason, and yet it was. Perplexing._

_Adrienne smiled and pulled out a math book. "When you can answer that Spencer, you come and tell me. What drove Amedeo Avogadro to find such an obscure number for such a strange purpose? If you know the answer to that, the universe is practically wide open." Her voice held an odd mixture of joy, sadness, and understanding. Adrienne knew the answer._

"_Yes Adrienne," he replied faithfully as he went back to his studies. All doubt about the strange girl had vanished only to be replaced by a desire to know her as well as any human was capable._

"The great Dr. Spencer Reid actually fell asleep during a team meeting," Morgan chuckled. Reid bolted upright, surprised to see the rest of the BAU staring at him with amused expressions. "Garcia, you should have been here."

"Tell me some one took pictures," she whined. Reid crossed his fingers, hoping that no one had thought of it. "He must look so cute!"

"What's the difference between me being awake and being asleep?" Reid grumbled. He ran a tired hand through his hair and yawned. "I look the same no matter what. My face doesn't suddenly magically become more attractive in sleep."

Emily rolled her eyes at the young doctor and told Garcia, "Don't worry. We've got them and I've already sent them to you."

Reid groaned and flopped his head back. Why did they always pick on him? "Thank you my bubalas," Garcia crooned. "I will converse with you at a later moment in time." The phone hung up, leaving the team to stare at it in silence.

"Does she scare anyone else?" JJ asked calmly as she began putting papers back into a file folder. Sure she had made the eccentric tech woman the godmother of her baby, but that didn't mean Garcia wasn't slightly deranged.

"Yes," Hotch agreed simply. Before any more comments could be made or Reid could complain, both Tilly and Sheriff Jenkins entered the room. Something was wrong.

"Another girl's just been found," Jenkins said without preamble. He looked pretty shaken up.

"Sandra Clark has just been found in the Main Street park," Tilly sighed, shaking her head.

"She's been missing for three years," Emily pointed out. "She wasn't at the meadow?"

"One hell of a decomp," Morgan muttered.

Tilly shook her head. The old woman elaborated further, saying, "She's only been dead for three hours."

There are so many little dyings that it doesn't matter which of them is death. ~Kenneth Patchen

I hope it was good. Tell me what you think!


	3. Chapter 3

The third chapter to my masterpiece. I have said this before, but I do truly hope that those of you reading this like it as much as I did when I wrote it. I like how I ended this chapter. Read on to find out what happens!

3

The silence that guards the tomb does not reveal God's secret in the obscurity of the coffin, and the rustling of the branches whose roots suck the body's elements do not tell the mysteries of the grave, by the agonized sighs of my heart announce to the living the drama which love, beauty, and death have performed. -- Kahlil Gibran - Broken Wings

The girl's body had been positioned directly beneath the oldest and most imposing of all the trees in the Main Street Park, the red maple. This particular tree towered over all the others. It was a fitting final resting-place for the daughter of the town's Mayor and arguably the most beautiful girl in all of Courtland. Sandra Clark's body showed no signs of decay. Her lovely sun-kissed hands held a tiger lily over her bosom, and her perfect blond hair splayed dramatically around her face. She was both absolutely beautiful and undeniably dead.

Dr. Reid stared down at the young woman and didn't see beauty. He saw yet another victim they had been too late to save. Reid was the genius, the boy wonder. He should have been able to figure out who was murdering young women and putting them on such disturbing yet resplendent display. How many more girls would fall victim to this careful butcher?

"Reid, pay attention," Morgan told the younger man. He looked at Reid with open concern. Morgan had apparently been trying to get his attention for a while.

"Sorry," the doctor muttered. He always seemed to be muttering, or mumbling, or murmuring. Reid was starting to get sick of being so pathetic in his own eyes, but he didn't quite know what to do to stop. Straightening up so he was able to look Morgan in the eye, Reid asked, "What were you saying?"

Morgan gave Reid one more uncertain look, then turned back to the case at hand. "I said, I think that this might be the UNSUB's new dumping ground."

"I don't think so," Reid replied as he bent to take the lily from the dead girl's clutches. "The UNSUB said that this girl wasn't a true victim. She was a way to grab the attention of the Mayor. If she was merely a tool, I know I wouldn't place her with the others just on a matter of principle."

Morgan stared at his young friend for a few seconds, then shook his head. "Why do I even bother with the boy genius around?" Morgan grumbled as he walked away to talk to Hotch, who was speaking with the children who had found the body.

Reid stared after the black man with complete shock on his face. Tilly, who had heard the entire exchange, chuckled and gave the doctor a grandmotherly pat on the shoulder before bending down to inspect the body. "I know that look," she chuckled.

"What look?" Reid sighed. He didn't even know what he had done this time.

Tilly continued to prod around the body. "You don't know what you did that made him angry. Truth is, he probably doesn't know either. People like you, Dr. Reid, have been treated like that through out history. So much knowledge comes with a great responsibility. Agent Morgan had a theory: that this was the new dumpsite for our serial killer. He was already making plans for a stakeout and undercover work and what not. Then you, who had not been paying any attention, dashed his theory and plans with one obvious and simple fact. A fact that he should have remembered, in his mind anyway."

Reid pondered the old woman's words. Taking the lily in his hand and placing it carefully in an evidence bag, Reid knelt on the other side of the body. "You said that you were related to the current M.E.?" he asked. He helped turn Sandra over.

"Yes," she replied. "And I can try and contact her when I get back to the morgue. I want her here anyway. I need her help with the autopsies, you see. And with Esmerelda missing, I want my Addy as close as possible. Don't you worry about a thing, Dr. Reid. We'll find this monster right quick when she gets home."

Reid smiled at the woman's faith in her niece. Everyone in the town so far thought of the 'Doc', as they affectionately called her, as the end-all-be-all of the universe. Her word was law and her opinion was fact.

"She appears to be just like all the other bodies," Tilly said sadly. It was true. The position of the body and method of murder were the same. "I'll know more when I get her back to the morgue. Why don't you go over and see what your Agent Hotchner has found out, and send me a scrapping young officer on your way."

Realizing what Tilly wanted the officer for, Reid's brow furrowed. "Should I warn them that you're having them move a body?" Reid asked seriously. Tilly gave him a mischievous smile, which he took for a 'no'.

After sending a poor unsuspecting Deputy McKenzie to help the elderly lady, Reid found Hotch and Morgan trying to talk to three little girls and two little boys. The children were all sniffling, like they had been crying. No little kid should have to find a body.

At a signal from Hotch as to which one, Reid knelt down infront of a little girl with high, matted curly pigtails. Her dirty face was streaked with tears and her sticky hands held a little doll clutched tightly to her chest. Typical four-year-old was not something Reid was used to dealing with. He stared at her for a while, and she stared back with scared sad eyes.

Finally, he thought of something to ask. "What's your name?" he asked brilliantly.

She sniffled, and replied, "I'm Dorothy Louisa May, but you can call me Dottie."

What a name, Reid thought. "What were you doing when you found Sandra?" he asked as gently as he could.

It apparently wasn't gentle enough. Dottie began to wail, "Mommy told me not to go out, but Hailey and Tessa and Sam came and said they was going to the park. They told me to come or they wouldn't be my friends no more. And then Tessa threatened to tell Ms. Doc I was being bad if I didn't come, so I camed here with them. Then we found Davie here playing with a frisbee and we wanted to play too. But then Sam threw it too far and it hit the lady in the face. We all ran over to say sorry, but she wasn't moving. And they made me poke her, and she felt weird. Lady's head plopped to one side, and then we knew she were dead!" The little girl gasped for air; she had said that all in one breath. After her tiny lungs were filled, she began to cry shrilly.

"It's okay, it's okay!" Reid tried to assure Dottie frantically. He reached out and put a hand on her small bony shoulder. Suddenly Dottie lunged foreword and wrapped her tiny arms around Spencer's neck. The doctor was shocked. HUMAN CONTACT! GASP! "Shh, it's all right. Please stop crying." He awkwardly rubbed her back.

She sniffled, and Reid felt snot on his shirt. He cringed, but held on to her any way. Once Dottie's crying subsided a bit, and she stepped back. Looking Reid in the eye she demanded with her arms crossed, "What's your name?"

"M-my name is Dr. Reid," he stuttered. That was what he could never understand about children: their minds were scattered and impossible to track. One moment she's crying, the next she's glaring.

"It's polite to say your name before you ask for mine," she informed him.

PAGE BREAK

"Sandra wasn't as lucky as the others," Tilly explained. The BAU team and the Sheriff were sitting in the latter's office, trying to make sense of what they knew so far. Tilly had finished her autopsy and had found something she thought they needed to know. "She wasn't killed with hemlock. Sandra ingested monkshood."

"Monkshood?" JJ asked. "Another plant?" All the many ways people used to kill each other secretly frightened the bubbly blonde. She did her job and did it well, but she did not envy the profilers. To be able to fathom the workings of the mind of an UNSUB, an individual who could do such abhorrent acts over and over, and then not flinch away from what they see made the team both staggeringly impressive yet terrifying to JJ.

"We might have something else to add to the profile," Hotch remarked. Plants were a unique signature. Using them both as the method of murder and as the calling card, the tiger lily, made these crimes even more particular to the UNSUB.

"That makes sense," Reid pointed out. Pulling out his copy of the note left for the Mayor, the doctor continued, "All of the other deaths were not violent and meant to preserve the beauty of the victim. Sandra's kidnap and murder almost seem impersonally angry. Maybe the UNSUB didn't like her. Not absolutely hate, but just a general dislike. She really was just a way to attract the town's attention."

Sheriff Jenkins rubbed his face with his hand tiredly. This case was exhausting because it was personal. "Mayor ain't goin' to like that," he finally sighed.

Tilly sighed as well, but for a different reason. "It don't matter what Tad thinks. Little Sandy suffered because we wrote the girls' disappearance as small town fever. Looks like Addy was right all along."

"Your doctor thought there was something going on and you didn't listen to her?" Morgan asked, puzzled. "I thought she was the apple of everyone's eye. Never wrong, if you need something find the Doc."

The Sheriff chuckled at the description. "That about sums it up," he agreed. "But the Doc left Courtland for a while when she was in high school. Took her mama out west to get her some help. Selena is a bit strange. There's no proper term for it. She's just a bit queer in the head. The genius kind of strange; seeing things in the universe that we have no right to see, I believe is how the Doc worded it once."

"So because she left town for a while, you automatically discredit her opinion on the reasons for the other girls' disappearance?" Emily asked. It was a stupid notion, and Emily was having a hard time wrapping her head around it. Having lived all around the world, Emily didn't understand small town ideas. It wasn't her job to understand the whole town, just the one bastard murdering young women.

Tilly shot the agent an admonishing look. "My niece likes to see the threads that connect the world get tugged and then watch the entire universe unravel. Her words, not mine. But running away was a far more likely scenario than a serial killer grabbing the girls up."

"Back to the monkshood," Reid announced, not so subtly bringing attention back to the case. "Monkshood grows from Pennsylvania all the way down to Georgia. All parts of the plant are poisonous and it can be absorbed through the skin as well as ingested. Its symptoms are instantaneous: burning and tingling feelings on the skin, numbness of the throat, tongue, and face, nausea, vomiting, blurred or dimmed vision, chest pain, giddiness, sweating, convulsions, weak pulse, low blood pressure, paralysis of the respiratory system, and finally the slow paralysis of the heart, which is the eventual cause of death. It's very painful, and victims are conscious until the very end. Death occurs within ten minutes of ingestion."

Tilly nodded. "As opposed to hemlock, whose death is much kinder and just as quick. I also tested the tiger lily. It contained no cyanide."

"He really didn't care about her at all," Morgan stated. Sandra's smiling photo stared up at the team from the open file.

_Reid found himself this time in his own childhood home in Las Vegas. The sun was setting blazing orange across the sky to mix with the navy night was bringing. Cicadas thrummed in the few trees that surrounded the suburban home and a lizard could be seen sunning itself on the porch._

"_Mom?" Little Spencer asked timidly. Older Spencer looked at the woman who had given birth to him and hoped that his was a good day. Little Spencer obviously hoped the same thing._

"_Yes honey?" she replied. Diana Reid turned from the TV to look at her son, her pride and joy. "What is it?"_

_Both Spencers visibly relaxed. This was their mother, not the schizophrenic woman who usually inhabited her body. "I have a friend coming over to study. Is that okay?"_

"_Why of course!" Mrs. Reid said delightedly. Her son had never mentioned friends before, at least not that she could remember. "When will he be here?"_

"_Umm," Little Spencer scrunched his forehead in thought, trying to figure out how to tell his mother that the friend was a she. "She'll be here in five minutes."_

"_She?" his mother asked calmly, eyebrows raised. Older Spencer rolled his eyes. He remembered this night; it was a pleasant memory. "Why don't you tell me about her?"_

"_Her name is Adrienne Cain. She's in my grade, and she's a theatre student. Her grades are really high and she likes English. She's really nice and I eat lunch with her and stay after school in the library with her sometimes. She's given me a ride home before. She has her license because her mother has an illness and she needs to be able to take care of her," the little boy rattled off in one breath. There was so much more that could be said about Adrienne, Older Spencer thought, but that was all his mother had needed to know at the time._

"_She sounds wonderful," Mrs. Reid agreed. Before any more could be said, there was a knock at the door. Little Reid leapt to the door and flung it wide open. There stood Adrienne, smiling her ironic smile with laughter in her eyes, laughter just for Spencer. He was like the little brother she never had._

_Whatever Mrs. Reid was expecting, Adrienne Cain wasn't it. For the first time, Older Spencer looked at what his friend was wearing. When he was little, and even when he remembered her, Reid never focused on her clothes. He did now. Her slim frame was covered by what seemed to be a black crochet tank top, under which she wore another regular tank top. The top was laced with bright blue ribbon around the low V-neck and the bottom hem. Her jeans were long and gently faded blue with the bottoms flared just enough to have them barely fall into the category of bell-bottoms. Adrienne looked both comfortable and graceful. Her long black silk hair fell down to her hips like always, giving her a sort of a cape of midnight._

"_You must be Mrs. Reid," the teenager greeted politely. Her voice was perfectly modulated, like a person used to speaking on stage. "I'm Adrienne Cain, a friend of Spencer's. I'm sorry for intruding upon your evening, but would it be alright if I studied here with Spencer?" Her voice even lilted up at the end in a perfect question. Her face betrayed nothing but polite hope. Older Reid looked down at her with approval, knowing his mother could tell an actress when she heard one; Little Spencer looked up at her with admiration, knowing that he would never be able to talk to any one like that._

_Mrs. Reid recovered nicely. "Of course Adrienne," she said warmly. She pulled the girl gently into the house by the elbow and led her to the kitchen table. "Spencer was just telling me about you. So you're a theatre student?"_

_Adrienne nodded. "Yes ma'am. Spencer tells me that you are an English professor? I'm sure he must have told you that our current production at school is Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing."_

_The two students sat at the table while Spencer's mother bustled around the kitchen grabbing milk and cookies. "He most certainly did not. What part are you Adrienne? And do you have a nick name?"_

_Adrienne laughed her infectious bell laughter before replying, "You can call me Addy. Most people do. And I'm to play Beatrice." Adrienne pulled a notebook out of her messenger bag and placed it on the table with her blue pen._

"_The leading lady," Mrs. Reid remarked. She was impressed, and it showed. "That is impressive for a sophomore." Older Spencer agreed, but to him Adrienne could do no wrong. _

_"Thank you," Adrienne said with a slight dip of her head. "But I asked Spencer to tell you. The actors are allowed three free tickets, you see, and I only need one for my mother. He was supposed to ask you if you would like to attend." Adrienne gave Little Spencer a nudge under the table with her foot. Only the fact his mother was scrutinizing him prevented the little boy from jumping up in the air._

_"We most certainly will," Mrs. Reid assured Adrienne with a smile. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a few tasks to finish myself." After giving Adrienne an affectionate squeeze on the shoulder, Mrs. Reid excused herself from the kitchen._

_The two sat quietly for a few minutes. Finally, Little Reid blurted, "She likes you!" Slapping his hands over his mouth, he stared at her with a mortified expression. "Sorry." Spencer had found it hard to adjust to having such a bright, beautiful, and in his eyes, perfect girl for a friend. Adrienne could be intimidating without even realizing it._

_"Spencer, there is nothing to apologize about," she reminded him gently. Adrienne put her pen down and leaned back, clasping her hands behind her head. This was a familiar pose to Little Spencer. It meant that she was going to pick his brain with questions that had no real answer. Oddly, he had come anticipate this pose and the questions it brought along._

_Older Spencer remembered those conversations fondly. Theories and hidden meanings along with a little conspiracy were the topics of discussion. Speculation and conjecture reigned supreme and there were no wrong answers, but there were levels of correctness that Adrienne seemed to revel in. She taught him to love it too._

_"Why is it that we as humans pick and choose who we like and dislike?" Adrienne asked.  
_"Reid?" Emily asked. The doctor had fallen asleep again, this time in the morgue. It was starting to worry the rest of the team. Reid was the reliable one, the one who stayed at work late and was in first the next morning. He was consistent, and any break from said consistency meant there was something seriously wrong.

"Come on man, wake up," Morgan shook his shoulder gently.

"Reid, wake up," JJ said quietly, like she would talk to her infant son. She had often viewed Reid as the baby of the group, and though his age had a little to do with it, it was because with everything he knew and all he had seen on the job he was still the most innocent of them. JJ felt like she needed to protect him when she could.

Reid groaned, still mostly asleep. "We choose whom we like and dislike because it helps us protect ourselves," he murmured. The boy genius snuggled further down into the corner on the floor where he had wedged himself.

Suddenly Reid's eyes snapped open. It took him a moment to orient himself, but he stared up at the team hovering above him looking utterly bewildered. He tried to distance himself from their close proximity by backing up, but he was as far back as the wall would allow. "C-can I h-help you?" he stuttered, then mentally cursed himself for his faltering speech.

"Yeah," Morgan replied as he stuck out a hand to help pull Reid up. Reid ignored the outstretched hand and scrambled to his feet. Morgan scowled; he rarely did something nice without an ulterior motive toward Reid and the rejection of help was not going to help Reid's case. "You can tell us why you keep falling asleep everywhere."

Reid didn't see the refusal as rude; he saw it as a way to try and keep some shred of dignity. Sleep was a vulnerable position. "I don't see how that's any of your business," he replied amiably.

"Of course your well being is our business," JJ insisted. She looked at the doctor with wide concerned eyes. "We're worried about you Reid. You keep falling asleep, you're not paying attention to the case, and you've been acting really strange."

"Stranger than usual you mean," he chuckled unhappily. "I'm fine."

"We're making it our business," Emily snapped. "You haven't visited Rossi since he was admitted into the hospital. Do you even know how he's doing?"

Reid glared at her. "If I wanted to have scathing remarks hurled at me and be drilled on the progress we're **not **making, I'd go visit Agent Rossi. And if there was something wrong with him I assume someone would tell me."

"How are we supposed to tell you when you're spending all your time in the morgue?" Morgan demanded. "What are you doing down here anyway?"

"Helping Tilly," Reid replied, puzzled. How could they say he was doing nothing? He was following the only thing they had: the bodies. "She has no one else her to help her, and I figured since I'm the only one who can remember all the victims' names, faces, and files I should help make up the autopsy reports."

JJ reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. "Reid, we're just worried about you. Morgan and Emily are just expressing it a bit more violently than usual," she said soothingly. Reid stared at her with his jaw dropped.

"I don't know what I've done to deserve this, but I would really appreciate it if you all just leave me alone," Reid snapped. Shrugging JJ's hand off, the doctor stormed out of the morgue leaving a very confused team behind him.

"Come on, pick up," Reid grumbled as he pressed the phone to his ear. So the team thought he wasn't focused on the case huh? He'd show them. They had no idea what they had unleashed.

PAGE BREAK

"Yes Dr. Reid, this is your better speaking," Garcia's voice finally floated over the line. "How may I be of service?"

Reid narrowed his eyes. He was so tired of people treating him like that. "Well Garcia," he began, his irritation leaking into his voice, "you can start by telling me where the local coroner is. No one seems to be able to find her."

"According to what I've found, she never made it to her mother's house," Garcia replied promptly. She realized Reid was in a foul mood. Since that rarely (cough, never) happened, she hopped to the point. "There has been no activity on her cell phone or credit cards, but I'm keeping an eye out."

"Are there any suspect for this so far?" he asked.

"Oddly enough, no," the techie replied. "No one in the area fits the description you guys gave me. But then again, there hasn't been a serious crime in the area probably since Columbus found this great land."

"Columbus found the West Indies, not Virginia," Reid replied distractedly. His mind was whirling. The Doc wasn't to be found and there was no suspect. He had been right all along; all they really had was a profile and the bodies. "Thanks Garcia." He snapped the phone shut.

PAGE BREAK

"Dr. Reid, I need a bit of help," Tilly sighed. Reid had retreated back down into the morgue. Let the team run around chasing whatever useless leads they DIDN'T have. If there were something to be found with the bodies, Reid was determined to find it. Tilly had been most gracious in putting him to use, so her request for help wasn't that strange.

"Of course," he replied. The doctor walked over to Tilly's table where the body of Rissa McKenzie lay. Her autopsy had already been performed and she had been stitched back up.

"No, not with the body," she told him. Beckoning for Reid to follow, he old woman walked over to a small room in the back of the morgue. Reid had assumed it was the ME's office even though it was strange for their office to be in the morgue itself. "Do you remember when I said that I was going to wait for the Doc to return so we could run a test together on the body? Well, she still isn't here and I think we need the results sooner rather than later. That's where you come in."

"What do you need me to do?" he asked almost eagerly. He opened the door for the old lady and walked in. "What are we testing for?" Finally, a chance to get some new information.

Tilly smiled at his enthusiasm. She closed the door behind them, like she was being secretive. "I've gotten old and my hands aren't as steady as they once were. I'll instruct you, but you are going to be testing all twenty-seven girls for belladonna poisoning the old fashioned way," she elaborated with a grand gesture at the old school chemistry set on the desk.

Reid gave her a puzzled look. "But I thought we had determined it was hemlock that had killed them," he asked. "Why do you think that there's nightshade present?"

"As you probably know, hemlock causes a wide range of painful symptoms. That leaves the chance for the victim to get hurt as they writhe in pain. Belladonna is a hallucinogen, but it also causes convulsions. The convulsions are counter acted by the hemlock, which deteriorates the muscle. Adding the belladonna would make the death quieter and more peaceful," Tilly explained. The pulled a chair over form behind the door and sat in front of the desk. "I already have everything set up. All you have to do is run the tests."

Walking slowly around the desk, Reid stopped next to the office chair. It belonged to the coroner. Sitting in her chair in her office didn't seem right without permission, but Tilly seemed to want him to. Reid sat down and carefully pulled the chem. set closer. "What do I do?" he asked, his face set with determination.

After what seemed like several dozen hours but was really only two, Reid leaned back from the Bunsen burner and ran a tired hand through his hair. "Finished," he said with a yawn.

Tilly shook her head in disbelief. "The bastard knows his botany all right," she declared. "Twenty-seven girls killed with a belladonna and hemlock salad. All of them except Sandra who got an ungodly dose of monkshood."

Reid opened his mouth to respond, but his phone began to vibrate. Fumbling in his pocket for a moment, the young doctor flipped the cellular device open and demanded, "Garcia, tell me you found her."

"Unfortunately I did," she replied. The tone of her voice was off; it was the one Garcia used when she had found something exceptionally horrid. "She never left Courtland. Her cell signal is saying that the good doctor is about twenty miles outside of town in an abandoned Southern mansion. You know, the kind wealthy slave owners had in the Civil War? I did some digging, and no one has gone in it since Lincoln was shot."

"Thanks Garcia," he said as he snapped the phone shut. Turning to Tilly he said, "The Doc never left Courtland. She's in an old mansion about twenty miles outside of town."

Tilly gasped, putting a hand up to her mouth in horror. "That bastard has them both," she whispered. Tilly closed her eyes, trying to stem off the tears that threatened to flow. She failed. Looking at Reid with angry tear filled eyes, she ordered, "Go get your FBI people. I'll find Silas. We'll meet back in the station."

PAGE BREAK

"Garcia found where the Doc is," Reid announced once everyone had assembled in the police station. "She never made it out of town. She's been kidnapped by the UNSUB like all the other girls, along with her cousin Esmerelda." Reid added Esmerelda's picture to the board. Emerald was a pretty thing: long bleach blonde hair, fair skin, and the brightest green eyes anyone had ever seen. No one had a picture of the Doc.

Hotch sighed. "Do we know where they are?" he asked. He hoped Reid wouldn't be insensitive enough to declare that the town's beloved Doc was missing and then not have a plan to find her.

"According to you all's tech specialist person, the bastard has them out in the old Bouville-Revett Mansion," Tilly announced. All local eyes turned to her, shocked. "Yes, I said the Bouville-Revett Mansion. I don't give a damn if you think it's haunted or not, you all are going to get my babies!" she yelled. The townsfolk lowered their eyes, ashamed that they had let superstition in the way of the safety of two of their young women.

"We need a plan of attack. There may be more victims in there than just those two," Hotch told the Sheriff. "Do you have a diagram of the mansion?"

Jenkins ran off to find the old map of the mansion. The police officers scrambled to get ready for a raid they had never practiced for. Tilly turned and, after giving Reid a brief smile, went out of the room presumably to get her medical kit. And the BAU? They turned their eyes toward Reid in unison, apologetic and amazed.

"Dude, we are so sorry," Morgan began, but Emily cut him off before he could continue.

"Reid, we were only trying to help," she said. He opened his mouth to reply, but she held up a hand. "But it seems that you didn't need our help. We're sorry for doubting you."

JJ gave Reid a very brief hug and told him with a small laugh, "I have to start remembering that you're an adult, not my infant son. You don't need mollycoddling."

"Thanks, I think," Reid replied. Looking over at Hotch, the doctor said, "I believe I need to check that email."

While the rest of the team watched, Reid opened his email and scrolled down to the only unopened file. He double clicked on it, and up popped the letter from a woman he had not seen or heard in years. The letter read:

**Dear Spencer,**

**I hope that you are well, but that unfortunately is not the reason I took the pains to find you. I will get straight to the point and hope that you might be able to help me. There have been a series of strange disappearances in the town where I live. I believe that local women between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five are being kidnapped and murdered. The only evidence to this is a letter our mayor received stating just what I have already said. The Sheriff will not listen to me and the Mayor is still grieving for his daughter. They refuse to believe there is a serial killer in such a small town as Courtland Virginia.**

**I know that you work for the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI in Quantico. I hope that my invitation for you and your team to come find this maniac is sufficient. If not, I fear or my life and the lives of the other women in this town. Please send me a return missive as soon as you have read this.**

**Ever Yours,**

**Adrienne Cain**

"Oh my god," Reid whispered, his voice barely audible. The team had been reading over his shoulder and watching his face change from puzzled to horrified and finally landing on terrified. "What's the name of the town coroner?"

"It's Addy," Emily replied. "That's what Tilly called her."

"Addy can be short for Adrienne," Morgan pointed out.

Reid slammed his laptop shut and sprang to his feet. Calling out to a group of cops near the door he demanded, "What's the Doc's name? Her whole name, not just first."

"Her name is Adrienne Cain," one of the men replied.

Reid slumped back into the chair in shock. "He has her," he whispered. "He has Adrienne."

**************************************************************  
Adrienne lay slumped on an old rotten floor. She was vaguely aware that she was only clothed in a thin silky white camisole and a white silk slip that stopped above her knees. Having neither eaten nor drank anything for several days at the least her strength was quickly leaving her. Her only hope was that Spencer had gotten the email.

Adrienne turned her head slowly toward the only other person in the room, her cousin and best friend Esmerelda. The poor thing wasn't even conscious. She was wearing a black silk camisole and slip exactly like what Adrienne was wearing. She chuckled weakly. The kidnapper had gotten it wrong; Adrienne always wore black and Esmerelda was the one in white.

The door creaked open slowly. In walked their captor. Who ever it was wore a ski mask, gloves, and long sleeves. He probably hoped that Adrienne wouldn't be able to recognize him. Lucky for her that he underestimated her observational abilities.

"Hello Adrienne," the captor purred. Adrienne's eyes widened almost enough to make her look comical. The captor was a woman. "I see that Esmerelda is already unconscious. Pity for you both."

Adrienne sat up cautiously. "What do you want from us?" she asked levelly. Her voice was raspy from lack of water and disuse, but still perfect. That seemed to piss the UNSUB off.

"What do I want Adrienne?" she yelled. "The same thing everyone wants: love. But this town frowns upon that. I can't have love the way I want it. So I have to take it!"

"You're a lesbian," Adrienne said slowly. It made sense. The flower, the method of killing. It was far too feminine a method for a man to have done it.

"You are too smart for your own good, Adrienne Cain," she spat. The UNSUB began pacing back and forth, working herself into a frenzy. "Adrienne Cain, the smartest of everyone in Courtland. Adrienne Cain, the one everyone goes to with their problems. Adrienne Cain, the one who can control anyone simply by being her charming self. Adrienne Cain, who could have any man she wanted but chooses to remain single. Why? Because she's too good for any of us normal people. Adrienne Cain went to Las Vegas for highschool. Adrienne Cain has more degrees in more subjects than your average community college offers. She's 'The Doc', and her word is law."

Adrienne glanced at her cousin. "What do you plan on doing to her?"

Though she couldn't see it, Adrienne felt the chilling smile uncurl on her captor's face. "Why, the same thing every _male_ kidnapper does if they're smart."

Adrienne's jaw dropped. "You can't!" she shrieked.

"Oh, but I can," she assured as she pulled out a dildo. "Rape is the closest thing I'll ever get to love. Sad, but true. I'm not inhumane though. Once I'm done fulfilling my twin fantasy with you two, you won't live long enough to feel ashamed of it."

Adrienne looked down at her cousin. _Please Spencer. Find us soon,_ she pleaded silently as she scrunched her eyes shut.

All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams. ~Elias Canetti


	4. Chapter 4

Sorry that this took so long in coming out, but I want to make sure that this story is the best I can make it. Enjoy!

The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death. – Unknown

"I think that he's holding the girls in the cellar," Morgan declared. Spread out on the table before them was a map of the Bouville-Revett Mansion. Sheriff Jenkins and a few of his men along with the BAU hovered anxiously over it, attempting to discern the best plan of attack.

Jenkins nodded. "The rest of the building is so old that the cellar is the only place left he could hold them," he agreed, his brow creased. The Sheriff was worried. The Bouville-Revett Mansion was in an advanced state of decay. If they weren't careful, it might come crashing down on their heads.

"Is there any other way into the cellar?" Hotch asked.

"No," Sheriff replied. "One entrance, one exit. Don't we want this bastard to be trapped?"

"If he's trapped he might try something desperate," Emily explained. She glanced over at Reid. The young doctor had done little but stare off into space since the startling revelation of the Doc's true identity. "We need to make sure that the Doc is safe."

"Adrienne," Reid blurted randomly, still staring blankly at the wall. All eyes turned and looked at him. Seeming to feel their gaze he turned. "Her name is Adrienne Cain. You wouldn't call any other victim by another title, so don't call her by anything but her name," he explained hollowly.

Silence met this odd request. "This isn't getting us close to getting those girls back," the sheriff finally snapped. "I say we're as ready as we're going to get."

"I think you're right," Hotch said with a sigh, but he wasn't pleased with the preparations. He knew there was nothing more they could do though. "Let's move out."

Moving both very quickly and excruciatingly slowly at the same time, the group of law enforcement filed out of the Courtland Police Station. The brilliant, hot summer sun struck them, forcing hands to fly up and shield their gaze and sunglasses to be pulled out. Once their sight had returned, they marveled at the number of people standing outside. It was as if the entire town had turned out to see Adrienne and Esmerelda returned safely home.

A little girl, Dottie, ran from her mother's grasp up to Reid. The tall doctor stared down at her in utter despair. Wordlessly, the girl handed him a poppy flower, then fled back shyly to the safety of her mother's skirt. Looking at the flower, Reid continued walking. It was a nice gesture, but at the moment meaningless compared to the might of the doctor's misery.

After mechanically climbing in the back of an SUV with Hotch and Sheriff Jenkins, Reid closed his eyes and thought in the way only he could. The universe seemed to unravel in his mind until he could see the very fabric of time and space. He saw the case as it was, not from his skewed perspective of wretchedness. There was a good chance that Adrienne was alive, but if the UNSUB knew they were onto him he might do something drastic.

And then, in the clarity that came with seeing the entire cosmos and understanding it, Reid realized something so earth shattering he almost fell over in his seat. It put steel back into his will, driving a purpose into his heart that he didn't know he lacked. He needed to save her, an actual physical need. For all the times she had saved him.

The archaic Bouville-Revett Mansion was three stories high and loomed out over once beautiful grounds that had long fallen into decay. Even in their haste to find the cellar, no one failed to notice the countless number of tiger lilies strewn about the property.

Guns drawn, the team glided silently around the building to the cellar door. Two of the sheriff's men slowly opened the dilapidated wooden storm doors with only a soft creak. They had been oiled recently. At the bottom of the steps was a steel door, like you would find on a bank vault. Without waiting for the rest of the group, Reid descended the stairs and flung open the heavy door.

"Reid, wait!" Morgan yelled, but he had already dashed into the room. His life was of little consequence so long as Adrienne lived.

Adrienne was lying in a crumpled heap near the wall. Her thin white clothing was caked in dirt and her long black hair was matted to her skull. Her eyes stared at him blankly, seeing while him seeing nothing. "Get the paramedic!" Reid yelled up the stairs, sounding much more calm and in control than he felt.

Running over to her, he saw with horror that she had already ingested the hemlock/belladonna salad. There was no time to wait for the gurney to struggle down the steps. Ignoring Hotch and Morgan as they yelled orders at him, Reid bent and swiftly picked the thin woman up in his arms. It was lucky she was so thin; Reid would not have been able to pick her up other wise.

Armed with the single-minded task of getting his friend to safety, Reid strode up the stairs into the setting sun. If they were lucky, Adrienne would survive the ride to the hospital.

Adrienne lifted her head from the dirt floor, trying not to cry out. Her stomach was so empty it hurt. The bones in her wrist stuck out like sticks wrapped in a thin sheet. _Scared lovers try positions that they can't handle,_ she thought randomly. It was a pneumonic device to remember the bones of the wrist. _Scaphoid, Lunate, Triquetral, Pisiform, Trapezium, Trapezoid, Hamate._

The slamming of the heavy metal door into the wall startled her from her morbid reverie. In walked her captor, still wearing the ski mask, with a tray of food. Salad, to be precise. "Here you are Adrienne Cain," the woman said kindly. She even smiled. "Such beauties as you and your cousin should not be left to wither. Eat and be strong."

Before she could perceive that it was a trap, Adrienne dove into the salad with ravenous abandon. As the Doc ate, her captor walked back over to the door and shut it slowly. That being done, she ran a gentle hand over the unconscious form of Esmerelda. Addy opened her mouth to tell her to get the hell away from her cousin, but nothing came out.

With the slow terror of one who sees their own death but does not fully understand, Adrienne realized immediately what was wrong. Her muscles, finely tuned to be able to wield a scalpel skillfully, were growing weak as she watched. They were atrophying in response to the salad.

Falling back dazed, the dark haired woman stared as though she were seeing as an outsider on the situation. As if by other ears, she heard the doors of the cellar open. The captor heard them too. A black fury crossed the little bit of face Adrienne could see before, with a scream of hatred and anger, the woman ran to the far corner of the room. _Of course_, Adrienne thought logically, _there's a secret passage._ With a last malevolent glance at Adrienne, the woman slipped out of sight.

For the second time that day, the huge metal door slammed open. Illuminated by the light of the afternoon sun a tall, lanky figure stood at the bottom of the steps. He was perhaps the most wonderful thing Adrienne had seen in days, and she tried to tell him so. But her mouth wasn't working as it should. Chills began to wrack her body, distracting her from the man.

The man was yelling as more people poured in, but Adrienne couldn't make out the words. Somewhere in her consciousness she knew that he was speaking English, but her muddled mind was having trouble even controlling breathing at the moment. A feeling of being hoisted up in two thin arms was the last thing Adrienne Cain knew before she fell into fitful unconsciousness.

"Is she all right?" Reid demanded for the fortieth time. Hotch, Morgan, JJ, Emily, and Reid stood in the waiting room of the hospital. Adrienne had been in the ER for five hours.

Hotch shot the doctor a tired glare. "They will tell us when they have her stabilized. You need to be patient and _silent_, Reid," the lead agent snapped. Reid flopped down into one of the uncomfortable chairs provided in the waiting room and scowled.

Down the hall, in a wheel chair and hospital gown, rolled Agent Rossi. "I hear that you have got the Doc back," he said with a smile. "That's good news. Maybe we'll finally start getting somewhere with this case."

"Do they have you on pain meds?" Reid snapped from his moody vantagepoint. Emily and Morgan sighed in exasperation. Reid had been irritable all evening.

Rossi chuckled and wheeled himself over to sit infront of Reid. Reaching out a tired hand, the agent ruffled the doctor's brown hair. "I am so medicated right now that for all I know you might be Emily," Rossi chuckled. Reid slapped his hand away. Still laughing, Rossi rolled back down the hall. "I call you when I'm not so high!" he called as he popped a wheelie.

Before anyone could make a comment about Rossi trippin on meds, Dr. Hill strode out of the double doors to the ER looking tired. On a gurney behind him was Adrienne Cain. An orderly was escorting her unconscious form down the hall. Glancing up from the retreating figures, Dr. Hill saw the exhausted group of FBI agents anxiously awaiting the verdict.

A broad smile broke across his face as he ambled toward them. "Adrienne is going to be just fine," he assured them. Reid slumped back in his chair and let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. Relief flooded him like a dam breaking, making him feel like he was almost drowning in joy. If she was all right, he was all right.

"I suppose it will be some time until she can wake up?" Hotch asked. Privately, he eyed the young doctor with a smile. Reid was lucky that his friend had survived; Hotch was truly happy for him.

"Yes, she won't be up for at least six hours, possibly more," Dr. Hill said, his tone switching to all business. A chart seemed to appear from nowhere into his hand. "We have moved her to room 207 until she wakes up."

"Will she be able to talk?" Emily asked. Saving lives was always one of the most important things they could do in a case, but if Adrienne couldn't tell them about or remember what had happened, they were back at square one.

Dr. Hill saw understood Emily's line of thought. He nodded, saying, "She will be able to answer all of your questions and more, if I know her as well as I claim to."

"And Esmerelda? Is she okay?" the Morgan asked sharply. All of these trivialities were nice, but there was another victim that kept getting forgotten.

The local doctor shifted nervously. "Esmerelda was a bit more difficult. Not as strong as Adrienne, you see," he explained sadly. Seeing the alarmed looks of the team he continued quickly, "She's alive! Don't you worry about that. But she is going to take much longer to recover than Addy."

Reid, who had been trying to politely listen, suddenly bounded to his feet. "Can I go see her?" he pleaded. He looked down at the doctor with wide, brown eyes that looked so sad Dr. Hill had to laugh or he would cry.

"Yes, m'boy," he chuckled. Reid smiled briefly in thanks, then skittered down the hall.

"Reid, wait up!" Morgan called as he ran after the younger man.

Adrienne Cain was lying on a hospital bed, eyes closed and hands folded over her stomach. If not for the IV and EKG, she could have been simply sleeping peacefully. To Reid she looked like a princess, awaiting her true love's kiss to awaken her from her spell-induced slumber. But that was far too girly a thought for the Great Doctor Reid to admit to aloud.

His thoughts had been so focused on the sleeping beauty that he did not notice Tilly in a chair next to Adrienne. "Well, I see that you got my Addy back, safe and sound," she declared as she slowly stood, startling Reid out of his gawking. Happy tears glistened at the corners of her eyes. "I can never repay you, Spencer. You don't know how much the girls mean to me."

Reid nodded. A lump in his throat prevented him from saying anything and he once again cursed his lack of elegance. Tilly gave his arm an affectionate squeeze before leaving. Reid moved to where the old woman had been sitting and took her chair. She had been cleaning Adrienne up; the young woman's skin was no longer dirt streaked and her hair wasn't matted to her head.

Reid knew that Morgan had followed him to the room. "This is Adrienne Cain," he said, his voice hitching on her name slightly as it squeaked. He coughed, trying to speak normally.

Morgan walked up behind Reid and placed a friendly, comforting hand on his shoulder. "Man, who is this girl?" Morgan asked lightly. "She must be something to have caught your eye."

Reid hesitated before he answered. Once the words were spoken they could never be taken back. "I went to high school with her," he answered slowly, almost reluctantly. "She was my best friend, my only friend really. She taught me how to use my brain in a different way."

"Like how?" the black man urged, but Reid stared at the woman in silence. "You can tell me, Reid."

"Why do people choose who they like and dislike?" Reid asked, seemingly from out of the blue.

Morgan went along with the change in topic, trying in vain to follow the young genius's line of thought. "Because it's how we are," he responded, taking his hand off the kid's shoulder to use it for gesturing. "Different tastes in things. We are drawn to like minded people, or people we're attracted to. People who intrigue us."

Reid shook his head at all of Morgan's answers. "Those are correct, but they aren't the most correct," he explained quickly. "We choose who we like and dislike because it helps us protect ourselves. By screening who we come in contact with, we limit the amount of damage that can be done to us by others."

Morgan shook his head with a lopsided smile. So this was the person who taught Reid to think and talk in circles. He had always assumed Reid had picked it up from Gideon, but he was apparently wrong. The beautiful, pale, dark haired woman lying unconscious on the bed had taught Reid what was perhaps his greatest skill.

Thinking that Reid wanted to be alone, Morgan backed out of the room quietly. He would talk to him later. Both of them, if he had his way.

Reid was grateful for the solitude. In a gesture he would never have done if she were awake, Reid reached across Adrienne's prone form and grabbed her hand, holding it loosely in his own two. It was cold, but not deathly so.

"I'm so, so sorry Adrienne," he whispered. "More than you could ever know." The young woman shifted in her sleep, a smile playing across her lips.

Reid didn't know how long he sat by Adrienne's side, and he didn't particularly care. Sheer will power and adoration for the beautiful woman kept hunger and exhaustion at bay. All the while she slept Reid watched over her.

It was well past dawn before Hotch realized Reid had never come back to Tilly's bed and breakfast. A brief search and a few questions was all it took for the supervisory agent to find the young doctor still in the hospital. Reid, still awake, was clutching the hand of a beautiful young woman lying asleep on the hospital bed. His face was more open than Hotch had ever seen it; he looked at the dark haired woman like she was the sun and he had been trapped in the dark for a long time. Maybe he had.

"Reid, you have to sleep," Hotch said gently.

Reid glanced up quickly at his boss, then right back to Adrienne. "I'll sleep when she waked up," he assured Hotch. A smile quirked at his lips. "I still can't believe this happened, that she's real."

Hotch, only out of concern for the well being of his friend, beckoned to Doctor Hill who was standing in the hall awaiting Hotch's order. Hotch had hoped it wouldn't come to this, but it was a necessary evil.

As quietly as he could, Dr. Hill crept up behind Reid and jabbed a hypodermic in his shoulder. Before Reid could react, Hotch grabbed one arm and Dr. Hill grabbed the other. Hauling him out of his seat, the two men proceeded to drag Reid out of the room. Reid tried to fight, but whatever they had injected him with had caused a fog to drift over his mind.

_Reid found himself standing behind to people on a dock. They were seated, their feet bare and just barely drifting in the sparkling water. The sun was high in the blue sky and a few birds winged about in search of a meal. Other than the gentle thrum of insects, there was no noise._

_"So you're going back to Virginia," Little Reid said morosely, breaking the silence. He gave the water a kick, disturbing the perfect reflection. _

_Adrienne stared across Lake Mead for a moment before answering. "Yes, my mother wants to go back. A new facility has just opened in Washington DC, and I think they'll accept her. Las Vegas is nice, but she says she needs the trees and grass of the Old Dominion. We leave the week after graduation."_

_Older Reid realized where and when he was. It was an adventure Adrienne had taken him on the weekend before they graduated highschool. They drove up to Lake Mead and had a picnic. Adrienne told him all the names of the bugs, birds, and plant life around them. She even made him a fishing pole out of a long stick and some fishing line she had in her car. A perfect afternoon, until she told him she was leaving._

_Little Spencer looked up at his older friend with a look of pure terror. "But how am I supposed to survive without you?" he demanded._

_Adrienne sighed and stared out at the water once more. "Spencer, what do you remember from our conversations?" she asked, the light that was on the water reflecting in her perfect jewel eyes._

_"In chronological order or by topic?"_

_Letting out laugh like bells, Adrienne gave the little boy an affectionate shove. "By relevance to what we're talking about," she told him with a half smile. It had become their little joke whenever she asked a question about something they had talked about or they had seen._

_Little Spencer screwed his eyes closed and thought for a moment. "Well, we never really talked about social survival. You told me how to incapacitate a bully and how to hog tie a bear though," he replied. He opened his eyes and saw Adrienne's 'you're not getting it' look, and slumped down. "I don't know what you're asking."_

_And for once, Adrienne gave an actual answer. "All we talk about is human behavior. And that's the key. If you remember everything I told you about people you won't have any trouble avoiding a confrontation. If you see a big Neanderthal heading your way, and he's ever so slightly favoring his left leg, what do you do?"_

_"Tell him to drink a cup of tea with ginseng in it and offer to explain the math homework?" Spencer answered hopefully._

_"And why?"_

_"He favors the other leg because he got hurt in the last football game and math would be the only class I would have with such a Cro-Magnon," Little Spencer replied promptly. He knew the question was about a football player because Adrienne called them 'Neanderthals'. The rest was common sense, at least it was to him after spending three years with Adrienne._

_"You'll be fine Spencer," she assured him with a smile. "You will be absolutely and utterly fine when I'm gone."_

At some subconscious signal, Reid snapped his eyes open. The fact that he had been asleep in the waiting room of the hospital registered at some level, but the sight before him made that completely irrelevant.

Adrienne was striding dramatically down the hall up to the desk. The look on her face was murderous, but even that was understating the expression entirely. Not even the unflattering lights of the hospital dimmed her perfection. Adrienne, seeming to not notice Reid, began a heated discussion with the nurse behind the counter. The nurse looked like a deer in headlights as she tried to find out what was wrong with the irate Doc.

Reid stared groggily at her, still not awake enough to call out for her attention. She was too thin, probably due to the hemlock. The ebony waves of her hair fell like a waterfall of darkness to her waist. She wore a black blouse, as all ways, with cream pants. Comfortable and stunning, all at the same time.

Adrienne, after apparently giving the poor nurse a severe verbal thrashing, turned and saw Reid sprawled out in a chair. A smile immediately lit up her face and she rushed over to greet him. He stood clumsily to his feet to greet her, not caring how disheveled and odd he must have looked to her.

"Spencer," Adrienne said as a greeting with her perfect voice. Her head was tipped all the way back so she could see him. It was an odd feeling; the last time they had spoken Reid was the one looking up.

"Adrienne," he replied with a smile, wincing as his voice cracked slightly. The two stared at each other for quite sometime. Reid was basking in the glory of her presence like a drowning man gulping oxygen. Adrienne on the other hand was scrutinizing him carefully, looking for something.

Apparently she found it, because she was suddenly in his arms, hugging him tightly. Reid hugged her back, resting his head on top of hers and closing his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, his voiced pained. "So, so sorry."

Adrienne shook her head and looked up at him with a teary grin. "Spencer, you have nothing to be sorry for. They say you carried me out of there yourself. You saved me," she said, trying to make him understand. "And I dearly hope that you will take the time now to explain how you found me in that cellar."

Reid hugged her tightly once more, then stepped back. As much as he would have loved to keep her to himself, she needed to see her grandmother and the rest of the town. "Later, I promise," he said. Adrienne gave him a stern look that clearly said 'you had better', but she assented. "Now you should probably talk to Tilly and the Sheriff. And the rest of the town."

Adrienne grimaced, clearly not wanting to deal with so many adoring people, but dropped the expression. It was her duty, of sorts, and she needed to do it. Reid admired her. It was unfair to have to go out and smile at people after such a traumatic experience, but Adrienne was going to do it without complaining.

Striding gracefully to the automatic doors of the hospital, Adrienne looked like an angel illuminated by the early morning light. Reid walked just behind her incase he was needed.

The doors hissed open and the bedlam that had held dominion over the morning silenced itself immediately. Half the town was outside the hospital, and they all stared over at Adrienne simultaneously.

Adrienne nodded at them all in general then headed over to the FBI general black SUV that sat in the parking lot. The crowd converged on them, vying for a closer look but never coming close enough to actually touch them. It felt oppressive to Reid, but Adrienne took it with good grace. With a start, Reid realized he was gently holding her elbow, guiding her to the car.

The keys, fortunately, were in a cup holder. Reid started the ignition and pulled smoothly out of the parking space. He had often wondered why the team didn't let him drive more often. He was a proficient driver, much better than the pure terror everyone felt when Morgan was behind the wheel.

The crowd of people parted behind them like the sea for Moses, waving and crying and smiling. Adrienne waved at them until they managed to get out of the parking lot, then she leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. "I suppose you want to know what happened," she ventured quietly.

Reid nodded, then realized her eyes were closed and she couldn't see the gesture. "If you don't mind," he replied apprehensively. It was sure to be a horrible tale filled with disturbing details.

"I'll start at the beginning then," she said, eyes still closed. "After I had sent you that email, I was getting ready to head north to DC to see my mother. If I was lucky I was planning to find you and talk to you about the situation directly. But unfortunately I was kidnapped as I was pulling out of my driveway.

"I'm embarrassed to admit that my captor was lying in wait on the back floorboard of my car. I stopped at the end of the drive and the UNSUB chloroformed me. The next thing I knew I was in a filmy white camisole and slip on the ground next to my cousin Esmerelda. We were starved for what was three or four days by my estimation, and Esmy finally fell unconscious. It was then the UNSUB return wearing a ski mask, probably to trick me into thinking I would get out alive. The UNSUB told me I was chosen for such an 'honor' because I thought myself better than the rest of the town," Adrienne explained. Her beautiful blue eyes snapped open, rolling in fury.

"I was told that I said I was better because I went to Las Vegas and left this town, and that my coming back was like that of a prophet bearing high learning for my illiterate home town," she spat bitterly. Reid sensed the worst part was yet to come. "And then I opened my mouth and the words came tumbling out.

"I told the UNSUB all I knew about her. And that infuriated her. So in revenge she-"

"SHE!?" Reid yelped. That was impossible. Every piece of evidence pointed to a narcissistic male.

Adrienne looked at her long time friend levelly, her eyes unclouded by shock and trauma. "Spencer, my captor was a lesbian woman with a grudge, not an art loving male."

"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." -Edgar Allan Poe


	5. Chapter 5

Wow, it has been far too long since I updated this story. I apologize. There should only be one more chapter and the epilogue, so don't give up on me yet. Not much Reid in this chapter, but a bit more behavior analysis and science stuff. Enjoy!

5

Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose. ~From the television show _The Wonder Years_

Reid watched in utter amazement as Adrienne quelled all of Morgan's fury, Emily's confusion, Hotch's icy calm, and Rossi's cynicism with a few sentences. He had hoped that she would win them over, but he had never expected it to happen so quickly.

"So what happened?" Rossi asked as they all sat down around a table in the sheriff's office. It was the only clear table in the entire police department. Rossi had been allowed out of the hospital, only by the virtue that he was needed for the case. "Can you tell us?"

"Certainly," Adrienne replied, leaning back comfortably in the very uncomfortable chair. "But first I believe I should tell you what is most imperative to your case."

Morgan, who had been disinclined to like Adrienne even before he met her, suggested somewhat condescendingly, "Why don't you tell us the story and let us decide what's important."

Turning her level blue gaze on him, Adrienne continued, "My captor and your UNSUB is a lesbian woman with a grudge, not a narcissistic male who has an obsession with beauty."

"That can't-" Morgan began, but then he stopped short. Reid could practically see the cogs in his head turning. "Oh my god." It all fit: the lack of rape, the care invested, even the poison. Especially the poison. How often had they told people that poison was a woman's art?

Hotch flipped open his phone and hit speed dial. "Garcia," he said shortly.

"Is she alright?" the techie's anxious voice floated from the small device. "Is Adrienne going to be okay? Because it would be heartbreaking for that entire town if she dies. And her poor grandmother, well she's really her great aunt but it doesn't really matter how they're related. But Tilly would be completely stricken. And-"

"Penelope, focus," Hotch snapped. Time running out. The UNSUB knew that they had Adrienne, who could identify her. That would force the UNSUB to do something desperate.

But the techie would not be deterred until her fears were alleviated. "Just tell me that you have a suspect. Because if that woman dies and there is no one to pay for it-"

Plucking the phone out of the Supervisory Agent's hand, Adrienne gave Reid a brief smile before turning her attention to Garcia. "Yes, Ms. Garcia, I am completely well."

"OH!" Penelope gasped. "It is such an honor to-"

"Ms. Garcia, we are now looking for a woman between the ages of 45 and 48. Her hair is brown, as are her eyes. Five foot seven and 137 pounds. Caucasian, right handed, with access to the Bouville-Revett Mansion. Knowledge of botany is extensive. Probably has lived in this area all her life. Can you find me someone like that?"

"I will find her faster than you can say Binary Code, ma'am," Garcia assured her. The phone hung up with a beep.

Emily whistled appreciatively at her handling of Garcia. "Nice," she said with a smile. "How did you get all of that information?"

Adrienne smiled back and handed the phone to Hotch. "I'm a coroner. It's my job ascertain the basic statistics on people," she explained with a grin.

"Do you have any idea who this person might be?" Morgan asked, a new respect for Adrienne evident in his tone. He still didn't trust her, but Adrienne was at least earning his respect. "They tell us that you know everyone in this town."

"Not everyone," Adrienne admitted. At the shocked stares she received from the FBI agents, Adrienne continued, "There are some, like our UNSUB, who believe that I think myself better than them because I went to high school in Las Vegas and attended college at Harvard. They stay as far from me as possible, so far that I don't know who they are."

"Who could possibly think that of you!" Reid demanded hotly. That was completely unlike his Adrienne. How dare they think so little of her.

Adrienne favored Reid with a smile. "Not everyone has the same high opinion of me that you do," she told him. Reid felt his heart skip a beat at that smile. It was his smile, the one she gave him alone when they were in school.

"Obviously not," Emily commented as she perused the case file. "Do you think that you were the intended target of these murders?"

Adrienne shook her head. "No," she replied. The thought had crossed her mind, but she had dispelled it immediately. From her conversations with the UNSUB Adrienne knew that she went out of her way to make sure Adrienne and Esmerelda were treated the exact same as the other girls. "I was just a perk, and Esmy was part of a twisted twin fantasy."

"Twin fantasy?" Rossi demanded.

"I assume that the UNSUB never capture more than one girl at a time?" Adrienne queried, though she already knew the answer.

"No, she didn't," Morgan admitted. "So either it was because she didn't think she could handle more than one girl at a time, or-"

"Or because that was the easiest way to capture them," Reid finished. It was so obvious that they already knew it, but with the new information Adrienne had given them it put an entirely new spin on the case. As a woman, the UNSUB could lure the women away without any hassle. Who would suspect a woman of doing such heinous crimes to another woman? Context was making the case so much more clear.

"I know that Gran already performed the autopsies, but might I take a look at them?" Adrienne asked hopefully. There was something she needed to do.

"Of course," Hotch replied, giving her an odd look. "It's your morgue."

With a smile directed at all of the team, Adrienne stood up and walked out of the room.

As soon as the door closed, Morgan turned to Reid with a teasing glint in his eye. "Man, she is so out of your league that it isn't even funny."

"Morgan, she's even out of your league," JJ pointed out with a laugh. The black man pouted a little, but it was with good humor. Turning to Reid, JJ said, "I think she's lovely. Why didn't you ever tell us that you had a girlfriend?"

Reid almost fell back out of his chair in shock. "Adrienne is NOT that!" Reid exclaimed. He couldn't even bring himself to use 'Adrienne' and 'girlfriend' in the same sentence, much less in that context.

They weren't convinced. No one had ever mattered so much to Reid on any case they had ever worked on. But before the accusations could be made and the facts laid out (Reid could be so dense at times), Reid's cell phone started ringing.

Fumbling to get it out of his pocket, Reid jerked the phone open and hit speakerphone. "Garcia, you're on speaker," he informed the tech woman. Hopefully she had good news: a suspect.

"Well now it's a party," Garcia laughed. "I have a name, if you all are interested. It took a lot of digging, but if it is on the World Wide Web, it cannot be hidden from Penelope Garcia."

"What's the name baby girl," Morgan asked. Finally, useful information. He would never admit it to Reid of course, but the kid had been right. All they had had before Adrienne Cain was the bodies.

"Lisabetta Borgias," Garcia replied promptly. This was her favorite part of the entire case process. When she got to give the team information that ultimately led to the capture of the bad guy, her day was complete. "Italian name much? Apparently she comes from an old family of- get this- Italian _poisoners_ that moved to Virginia in the seventeen hundreds. They were disowned by the main family back in the old country, and now she's the last of this branch. She lives on 130 Glen Hollow, about a mile from the Bouville-Revett mansion."

"Thanks Garcia," Hotch said, his mind already turning as he considered how to go about capturing the woman.

Snapping the phone shut, Reid stood up. "I'll go find Tilly, the sheriff, and Adrienne."

-  
The cool air of the morgue felt wonderful to Adrienne after so many days in that cellar, and then in the hospital. Even with the bodies strewn about in various states of decay, the Doc felt at peace. It was good to be home.

Walking over to the first body, Sandra's, Adrienne felt a slight pang of remorse on what she was about to do, but it was necessary. She had first hand experience with what the UNSUB had done to Esmy. If anyone had an obligation to these girls, it was Adrienne.

Humming an errant tune, the doctor began the unwieldy task of flipping the bodies over on her own. Normally she would have had Skippy helping her, but the poor kid was still in the hospital. A pang of guilt rushed through her at the thought, but she shoved it back. There would be time to apologize later.

Just as she had thought, Tilly hadn't even considered checking for such a thing. Adrienne sighed, leaning on the table for support. Twenty-seven girls dead. Twenty-eight raped in the anus.

"Adrienne?" Reid's voice came from the door. The Doc had been so focus with the bodies that she hadn't noticed him. "We have a suspect."

Nodding, she gestured for him to come and see what she had found. "Spencer, there's something that I forgot to tell your team," she sighed. Vocalizing it would make it more real, but it needed to be done.

"What?" he asked, his honest brown eyes staring down at her. Adrienne hadn't realized before just how much she had missed her younger friend. It was also odd to notice for the first time how cute he had grown to be, not really an appropriate thought for a morgue.

Closing her eyes to regain her focus, Adrienne said as monotone as she could manage, "The girls were raped in the anus with a dildo."

The little open/close movement Reid was making with his mouth would have caused Adrienne to dissolve into a fit if giggles had they been anywhere else. "All of them? How do you know what object was used?" Reid asked, his voice squeaking.

Adrienne gripped the side of the table she stood next to, like it would save her from drowning. "I saw her do the same to Esmy," the dark haired woman whispered brokenly.

Reid stared at her in absolute shock. It wasn't as if there was any need to inform the rest of the team that particular detail immediately, but Adrienne had kept it bottle up inside. That knowledge, the girl closest to her in the entire world had been anally raped, must have been eating her alive.

"Adrienne," he murmured, pulling the doctor into his arms hesitantly. She went willingly, letting out a strangled sob as she buried her face in his chest. "We'll get her, I promise."

-  
Morgan and Emily stood in the cellar of the Bouville-Revett mansion. The dirt floor was covered in shoe prints from the local police, the UNSUB, and FBI themselves. None of them were recognizable of course; they all over-lapped.

"There has to be something here we can use to find this woman," Morgan grumbled as he knelt down to examine a mark in the dirt. "The UNSUB, as far as we know, is Lisabetta Borgias. She hates this town because she thinks they will never accept her sexuality. So she kidnaps the women and rapes them anally, then poisons them. I think that she hates herself even more than she hates this town."

Emily nodded, running her hands along the wall. Borgias had slipped out through a secret passage, and Emily wanted to know where the passage led. Of course, she had to find it first. The walls appeared whole, not a line or door or anything out of place. "We've found her lair," Emily pointed out, "So she can't take anyone else. But where is she hiding? The Sheriff sent a couple deputies over to her house and it was empty. The meadow is still taped off, and there's been an officer guarding it since we arrived."

Before Morgan could reply, Emily tripped on a rock. Throwing out her hands to stop herself, the female FBI agent pushed a section of wall open. In the corner, tucked away from sight, was a door that led underground.

Emily and Morgan stared at each other briefly in amusement and shock. Things in life rarely mirror ScoobyDoo. "Ladies first," Morgan said, gallantly gesturing for Emily to proceed ahead.

The passageway was dark, illuminated only by the yellow gleam of their flashlights. If there was light at the end of this tunnel, it was a long way off.

-  
"Hotch, look at all of these plants," Rossi said with a broad gesture around the room. Green was the dominant element in the room. Everything from the exotic flowers to aloe plants had a place in Lisabetta Borgias's heart. "She must have come back here sometime."

"And why is that?" the sheriff asked as he examined a Venus-fly-trap. The man looked as though he expected it to try and bite him.

Hotch, looking up briefly from the pile of mail on the kitchen table, replied, "She would have had to water the plants."

As if just to spite the agents, a timer went off somewhere in the house. Above their heads what looked to be a sprinkler system began pouring a fine mist over everything; the system appeared to be a cross between ones that spray fruits and vegetables in a supermarket and those that are installed in ceilings for fire extinguishing purposes. It was homemade, that much was obvious.

"Or not," Hotch muttered. Water fell every where, soaking the agents and sheriff along with the plants. But in the far corner of the room, all the water seemed to be pooling in one square section. Walking over, Hotch tapped on the spot with his foot. It was hollow.

"What did you find?" Rossi asked as he came to join the other man.

"I think I found a trap door," Hotch grunted as he tried to remove the floor panel. "Give me a hand."

-  
"What is that?" Emily asked, shining her light at a section of the wall ahead of them. It had some strange markings on it, but from a distance she couldn't tell what they were.

"Probably just scratches or water or something," Morgan replied, scanning warily about with his gun drawn. If this was the way Lisabetta Borgias had escaped, there was a good chance that she was still down there.

Knowing that she would see when she got there, Emily changed the topic. "What on earth was this passage for, anyway?"

Morgan snorted. "I'm no Dr. Reid, so don't quote me on this," he joked, and Emily gave him a light shove. "But I think it was used back during the Civil War to help the aristocrats escape Northern Soldiers."

The patch of wall Emily had pointed out was right infront of them now. Lifting her flashlight, Emily stared hard at the marks. Morgan had been wrong; it was writing on the wall. There was also a little niche that would have been overlooked unless you stopped to read the inscription.

"November 17, 2004. The beauty of death is freedom," Emily read quietly, failing to suppress a shiver. "I wonder what she meant."

"Em, I think you should look at this," Morgan called. He had gone to inspect the little cache in the wall while she read the inscription. Before Emily could be angry that he ignored her, she saw what was in the hole. A skeleton.

Clearing her throat in shock, Emily sighed. "I think we found her stresser."

"Do you hear that?" Morgan asked, swinging his gun in the direction the path continued on.

"Hear what," Emily demanded. If Morgan was trying to freak her out, there would be hell to pay. But then a soft thud, thud, thud, like someone walking, reached her ears.

Pulling out her own gun, Emily motioned for Morgan to step into the niche. There, they lay in wait for whoever was walking down this hidden pathway.

-  
"I bet this leads to the basement of the Bouville-Revett Mansion," Rossi remarked as he swept a dusty spider web aside. There was no spider on it, so he didn't feel to bad about destroying the home of another creature. He would have never thought of such things before joining the BAU again.

Hotch nodded. "I'm sure you're right," he agreed. It certainly would explain how Lisabetta Borgias had escaped. Sadly, it still didn't give them any clue as to where the UNSUB was now. The chances of her still being in the tunnel were slim.

As Rossi opened his mouth to respond, Hotch heard the click of a gun. In a spilt second he had his own weapon out. Good thing too, because the alphabet soup was flying.

"FBI BAU!" Hotch and Rossi yelled, aiming their guns down the hall, simultaneously as Emily and Morgan popped out to yell the same thing. An awkward silence followed.

Rossi was the first to break the silence. "Well, at least we know where the tunnel goes now," he muttered, casting a dark look down the empty hallway. "Did you find anything interesting? Cause we sure as hell didn't."

"Yeah," Emily replied, trying to catch her breath. Hotch and Rossi had nearly given her a heart attack. "You're going to want to see this."

-  
Dr. Hill stood next to the prone form of Esmerelda Thomas, looking over a chart. The poor girl had suffered so much, but still managed to hang on to the tiny shred of life she had arrived with. Esmerelda would live, but would probably be plagued with nightmares for the rest of her life.

Sighing, Dr. Hill looked at the EKG machine next to the bed. At least her heart rate had gone back to normal. The steady drip of the IV was the only noise in the room.

Tilly had already been by to clean up her granddaughter. Esmerelda's hair, so blonde that it seemed white, was freshly washed and splayed lovingly about her face. Dirt no longer encrusted her face, and the minor cuts she had sustained were sterilized and bandaged.

"Dr. Hill!" Skippy exclaimed from behind, startling the doctor. His voice was still raspy from the cyanide. "Is she all right? Will Esmy be okay?"

Hill smiled at the young man. "Ms. Thomas will be fine Skippy," he assured the young man with a wink, causing Skippy to blush. The whole town knew of Skippy's intention to court Esmerelda. Most thought that it had been Adrienne Cain's idea in the first place, trying to give her cousin a good man. Either way, it was the cause of great and humorous debate. "Shouldn't you be back in your bed?" the doctor asked sternly.

"I just wanted to make sure that Esmy was all right," he whispered, walking over to the bed. "They're funny, aren't they?"

"Who?"

"The Doc and Esmy. Both of 'em are so beautiful, so practical, and so strong willed, but they're so different. And this town couldn't function without either of 'em. Just a strange pair, that's all there is to it," Skippy explained, a half smile on his face. His hand had found its way to Esmerelda's and clasped it tightly. "I think I'll go on back to my room now, Dr. Hill."

Hill nodded. "That would be wise," he agreed, eyeing the young assistant ME with a mixture of concern and compassion. It was settled. The first thing Hill would do when he got home was hug his wife, because she needed to know just how special she was to him.

Turning back to the chart, the doctor once more became absorbed with how best to get Esmerelda recovered.

After a bit of time, which Dr. Hill had lost track of while looking at the chart, a cough drew his attention from the unconscious girl.

"Skippy," he muttered, flipping a few pages, "I thought you had gone back to your room."

A small, hard chuckle greeted his words. "I'm sorry Doctor," a woman's voice replied. Hill turned around, one hand going to the call button near the bed. "I should have announced my presence."

Hill sighed in relief. For a second he thought that the murderer had come back for Esmerelda. What an absurd thought. "Lisabetta," he growled, "Don't scare me like that. I could have brought security down on you."

Lisabetta smiled. "I'm sorry," she said, shrugging her shoulders as a sign of peace. "I just wanted to see how Esmerelda was doing."

"She's fine," Hill muttered, going back to the chart. Really, he shouldn't be so jumpy. What with the Sheriff having put officers at every entrance to make sure no one came to bother such high profile patients… "Wait, how did you get in here?"

For an answer, Dr. Hill received a rag doused in chloroform.

There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory. ~Josh Billings


	6. Chapter 6

Sorry for the long time between chapters. This should be the second to last one, and then the epilogue. It's not quite so long as the others, but I like this chapter. Enjoy!

6

Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food. ~Austin O'Malley

"So we know that Lisabetta Borgias is killing women because her mother, who I assume is the body we found in the tunnel, repressed and punished her because of her sexuality," Rossi explained, leaning back casually in his chair. The team and Adrienne were gathered around a table in the sheriff's office once more, comparing what they had found on their respective searches.

"The mansion was the easiest place to hold and starve the women until she raped them and transported them to the meadow," Morgan continued, leaning back and folding his arms behind his head comfortably. The solution was nowhere in sight. Unless they could figure out where Lisabetta Borgias was hiding, no one was safe. She had seen them and knew that the FBI was after her. Borgias was probably devolving into a frenzy as they spoke.

"We still don't know why she chose that particular meadow, or why the women were raped in the anus," Emily pointed out. Flicking her eyes over to Reid for a moment pulled a silent chuckle out of Emily. Reid was watching Adrienne out of the corner of his eye, trying to be discreet and failing. The half-smile on her face told the FBI agent that the Doc knew Reid was watching. Beauty and the geek, how cliché.

"And we're sure that she's not gone to the meadow?" Rossi asked, turning to Hotch and JJ who were standing against the window.

JJ shook her head. "I already called the officer on guard duty, and had the sheriff send up another man to help. No one has entered or left that field since we taped it off."

"I don't think that she would return to the field," Hotch said slowly. His brain, which had felt like it had stalled itself, began to work again. "That place is no longer sacred. We've defiled it. She would have returned to the mansion or her house to protect her plants. But she's not there, we already checked."

"You don't think that she could be looking for Addy, do you?" Reid asked, looking around the table. Some one had better say no. Reid needed assurance that his superhero wasn't in danger. Even watching her have an emotional break down in the morgue could not make the Doc human in the eyes of the boy genius. Addy Cain was still the savior of his personal universe.

Adrienne, who had been staring off into space, snapped her gaze back into focus on Hotch. A moment of understanding passed between the two of them, something unknown to the other agents in the room. The two of them knew where Lisabetta Borgias was hiding, and it wasn't good.

Before Hotch could open his mouth to reveal their revelation, JJ's phone rang. "Agent Jereau," she answered promptly and professionally. "What? No, of course. Are you sure? We're on the way."

Snapping her phone shut, JJ looked up at the team in horror.

"JJ, what's wrong?" Emily demanded. Everyone in the room shifted forward in their seats. Whenever that look alighted on JJ's usually calm face, sirens followed.

It was Adrienne who answered, in a hollow voice, "Borgias is in my cousin's hospital room. She's going to finish what she started. She's going to kill Esmerelda."

-  
The trip to the hospital was a blur for Reid. For once, it was convenient that the team never thought to let him drive. Reid would have wrecked the SUV for sure, in the state he was in. Horror had numbed him, for some reason. It was irrational, he knew. He had never met Esmerelda Thomas. There was no emotional attachment to her.

Adrienne sat next to him, holding his hand and staring out the window. She got car sick, he remembered suddenly. Addy couldn't sit in the back seat because she became violently ill. Why was she sitting back with him?

"Spencer," she said again, shaking him lightly. "Are you alright?" Her eyes, so blue, stared up at him. Addy would know. Addy always knew. She would be able to see the unrestrained terror he was feeling.

Carefully, Adrienne leaned her head on Reid's shoulder. "Esmy will be fine Spencer," she promised. "None of this is your fault."

"But if I had just answered the email-"

"Spencer, I should have sent the email sooner. The mayor and sheriff should have trusted me more. The culmination of human error from all parties involved is what caused this. Blame can't be placed solely on one person. You know that," she insisted, clasping his hand in both of her own.

The small, fine hands that encased his own so gently almost made Reid sigh aloud in relief. As reason flooded back into his mind, a new knowledge came along with it. Spencer Reid was in love with Adrienne Cain.

-  
Hostage situations never ended well. Hotch knew that. There were countless statistics, all which pointed to the fact that either Lisabetta Borgias would commit suicide by cop or Esmerelda Thomas would end up on a slab in her cousin's morgue.

"Where are they?" Hotchner demanded of the first policeman he saw. "Has she made any demands?"

The young man gulped, his throat bobbing like a bobber on the water. "Ms. Borgias is up on the third floor, room 308. Miss Esmy hasn't woken up yet, and Dr. Hill is tied to a chair," the man answered. His voice was so thick with a southern accent that it took Hotch a few moments to process his words.

"And the demands?" Rossi prodded, coming up beside him.

"She wants Ms. Addy. She won't talk to anyone until she sees Ms. Addy," the young man replied promptly. "And Sheriff Jenkins wants to talk with y'all. He's just inside."

Not needing any further prompting, Hotch and Rossi ducked under the police line and headed for the automatic doors of the hospital. Parents always tell their children that hospitals are a good place and you shouldn't be afraid of them because the people inside are there to make you better. What a load of bull.

Jenkins was standing at the desk next to Skippy. The young assistant ME appeared to be having an emotional breakdown.

"I passed her in the hall!" Skippy yelled, spittle flying onto Jenkins's mustache. "If I hadn't left when I did, I might be trapped in there too!"

Jenkins reached out a hand to try and comfort the young man, but was slapped away. "Now Franklin," the Sheriff warned. "You gotta count your blessin's. If you had been trapped in that room, we'd not even know what was goin' on. You're a hero, son. Start actin' like it."

"You don't understand," he sighed, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. With his knees drawn up to his chest, Skippy looked like the teenager he was. "I should have protected her."

"Esmy will be fine," the Sheriff assured the distraught kid. "Addy ain't gunna let her cousin die by the hand of this she-psycho. And with the FBI here, Lisabetta don't stand a chance. Now I gotta go with the agents. Don't do nothin' stupid, Skippy." With one last firm look at the assistant ME, the Sheriff led Rossi and Hotch toward the stairs.

"She wants to talk to Addy," he explained as they made their way up to the third floor. "That's all she's said. Refuses to talk unless Addy is in the room. She's usin' Esmy as leverage."

Rossi nodded. This was a common reaction when these kinds of people got cornered. They prolonged their own demise, taking down as many people in a hail of bullets as they could. Borgias just wanted to make sure that Adrienne and Esmerelda were caught in the crossfire.

"I'm going to try and talk her out," Hotch explained, handing his weapon over to Rossi. He kept his spare at his ankle, just in case. "We don't want to let Adrienne in that room."

"We'll be watin' for the word out here," Jenkins promised, gesturing to the policemen lining the hall. All had their weapons drawn; this was personal.

-  
"Spencer, calm down," Adrienne said once more. "I'm right here, Esmy is fine, and none of this is your fault."

They were inside the hospital, sitting on a couch in the waiting room of the ER. Reid was holding his head in his hands, muttering to himself.

"Spencer!" she finally snapped. Reid's head shot up, startled. His brown eyes were troubled and shell shocked. Rather than the cartoon favorite of a slap, Adrienne gave Reid a quick kiss on the lips.

"Ahhh!" he yelped, holding a hand to his lips. Adrienne would have giggled, had there not been a murderer holding her cousin hostage.

"Are you listening?" she asked, blue eyes piercing through the fog of his guilt. He nodded mutely. "Good. Esmy is fine. Hotch is going to get Borgias out without any trouble. The other victims were not your fault. What happened to me was my own fault. You can stop worrying," she assured him kindly, caressing his cheek with her thumb.

"But-" Reid began to protest. How was any of this her fault? Why was she not worrying about- then he stopped. The doctor's eyes widened comically. "You kissed me," he muttered, face heating up.

Adrienne chuckled. Before she could say anything, Rossi came jogging into the room. "Adrienne, we need you," he panted.

The Doc was up in an instant. "What's happened?" she asked calmly. It was a professional voice for a professional situation, Reid thought.

"Hotch can't get her to talk. We need you to get Borgias to give herself up," Rossi explained quickly. "We've gotta hurry-"

"NO!" Reid exclaimed. He had just gotten her back; Reid could NOT lose his super hero again.

A cool hand rested on his arm. "Spencer, it has to be done. Besides, it's me," she declared with a cheeky smile. "What could go wrong?"

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it. ~Michel de Montaigne


End file.
